
Glass. 
Book. 



— 7- 






GopghtS?. 



CGffiRIGKT DEPOSm 




J. H. TILDEN, M. D. 



Care of Children 
5n3 Mothers 



BY 

J. H. TILDEN, M. D. 

Author of "Criticisms of the Practice of Medicine," "Cholera 

Infantum," "Typhoid Fever," "Appendicitis," "Diseases 

of Women and Easy Childbirth," "Gonorrhea and 

Syphilis," "Food," Vol. I, and "Food," Vol. II 



Every child has a right to be well born, 
and it is a crime for people to assume 
the responsibility of parenthood without 
adequate knowledge; hence this book 



DENVER, COLORADO 

J. H. TILDEN, M. D. 

Editor and Publisher 



T&' 



H* 



s 



Copyright, 1916 



fee 

JAN 22 1917 



>Ci,A453739 



Foreword 

There is no crime greater than the bringing of 
children into the world haphazardly. When young 
people are married without any thought regarding 
their health; without any thought regarding their 
mental condition; without any thought as to their 
fitness for assuming the responsibilities of parent- 
hood, they are taking upon themselves the responsi- 
bility of cursing children before birth, by transmit- 
ting to those children the effects of the careless life 
they have been living physically and mentally. 

Inasmuch as there is a growing sentiment in oppo- 
sition to blind haphazard in the raising of children, 
I have taken upon myself the responsibility of writ- 
ing a book to aid those who wish to get out of the 
conventional lines in knowing how to prepare them- 
selves for childbirth and the care of their children 
after birth. 



DEDICATION 



If this little book will enable a few mothers 
to have better health for themselves and raise 

ideally healthy children children that will 

be a pleasure and comfort to them 1 shall have 

been rewarded for my effort. 



Contents 

PREFACE 



Page 

Heredity — What Is It? 5 



INTRODUCTION 
Care of Mother 7 

Before Birth 
After Birth 

CHAPTER I 

Care of Children from One to Five Years 31 

Bathing, Clothing, Weight, Walking, Talking, 
Teething 

CHAPTER II 

Feeding During First Year 50 

Care and Preparation of Milk 
Quantity and Intervals for Feeding 

CHAPTER III 

Feeding : Second to Fifth Year 74 

Second Year 
Third to Fifth Year 



CHAPTER IV 

Page 

Care of Children from Five Years to Full Devel- 
opment 89 

Feeding, Clothing, Bathing, Sleep 



CHAPTER V 

Children's Diseases and Their Treatment 98 

The More Common Ailments of Childhood 232 

CHAPTER VI 

Miscellaneous .' .234 

The Four Golden Rules 

Foreign Bodies in Nose, Ear, and Windpipe 

Care of Breasts after Childbirth 

Hints for Mothers 




Preface 



HEREDITY— WHAT IS IT? 

^^>0^~ HE care of children should begin with their 
* |j5 ^ M conception at the latest, but for finest results 
W it should begin several generations earlier. 
A line of ancestry free from viciousness, 
possessed of poise — which is another name 
for health — should transmit intelligence and 
health to its offspring. The health and intel- 
ligence transmitted are in the form of potentiality, and 
after birth, if these qualities develop, they must be cul- 
tivated. 

An inheritance of morality may be kept down by an 
environment of immorality ; an inheritance of intelligence 
may be inhibited by an environment of ignorance. 

When crime and criminal nature are recognized as 
disease, or as the functioning of structure unideally de- 
veloped, society can begin to do a developing work at the 
very foundation of morality and ethics. 

The sound given out by a musical instrument depends 
upon its construction and the material out of which it is 
constructed. The character of the musical harmony sent 
out depends upon the player. 

While the human body is not stereotyped, or confined 
to narrow limits, like an inanimate instrument, yet there 
is much in common between the two. The human machine 
may, by a cultivated will, compel a defective anatomism to 
give out functions that are not wholly natural to it. For 
example, people may be taught to sing and play musical 
instruments by the hard and fast rules governing music — 



on the order of player instruments — when in reality they 
are not musical. By strict drill, physical defects in all 
lines may be largely controlled, proving the arbitrariness 
of habit. Habits that are not natural, but made potential 
by inheritance, may be overcome. This makes the human 
machine different from the inanimate machine. 

Heredity is not the hard and fast lines that many 
think. It shall be my endeavor to point a way of develop- 
ment for those who are not blessed with the advantages of 
birth or a favorable environment. 

The first requirement for a healthy, normal human 
being is to be born well. I do not mean born in luxury 
and with the advantages of wealth, but born in health — 
which is more than wealth. 



Introduction 




CARE OF MOTHER 

ONFINEMENT, or childbirth, is a natural 
phenomenon. When travail is allowed to 
advance along normal lines, the suffering is 
not great, barring anatomical deformities. 

The reason for so much pain and com- 
plicated labors, with worn-out mothers, and 
more or less injury to both mothers and 
children, is that mothers do not live normal lives. They 
are not allowed to go through labor naturally. The pro- 
fession is more often officious and meddlesome than other- 
wise. Not wilfully or knowingly officious, I would say; 
but physicians are trained into a belief that it is their 
duty to help suffering. In doing so, they often complicate 
labor, and make it unnecessarily painful and dangerous 
to the health and life of both mother and child. 

When mothers have been imprudent in eating too 
much, and perhaps indiscreet in other ways, they may 
have indigestion and gas that trouble them much. Dis- 
turbances of this character cause much discomfort near 
the end of gestation. Pain from gas distention near the 
end of pregnancy fools the prospective mothers and their 
doctors into believing that the early stages of labor have 
begun, and both doctor and patient get busy in doing 
something; perhaps, at first, nothing more than allowing 
themselves to be deceived into the belief that labor is 
about to begin, and the disquieting effects that disappoint- 
ment always brings when labor does not advance. 



8 Care op Children and Mothers 

This stage is where the full value of an expert obste- 
trician is seen. He makes his examination and declares 
to his patient: "Your labor has not begun. The neck of 
your womb has not taken on the characteristic changes 
which announce that labor is imminent. You will not be 
confined for a month yet." But the patient will insist: 
"My time is up." The doctor who knows, answers : "You 
have made a miscalculation in time. Be patient and 
allow your labor to come as it will. The longer your 
labor is postponed, the easier it will be." 

The greatest crimes and the display of the densest 
professional stupidity in obstetric practice are committed 
at exactly this stage. They consist of the blundering per- 
petrated in hurrying labors from twenty-four hours to one 
or more weeks in advance of regular time. 

Correct living during gestation, patience on the part 
of the patients, and doctors intelligent enough to wait 
until labor comes from a full preparedness, will do away 
with the need and excuse for drugs to deaden pain and 
instruments for expediting labor. 

Too often a desire on the part of the doctor to end 
labor quickly gets him and his patient into a lot of trouble. 

A bit of advice for prospective mothers: Do not be 
impatient! When the time approaches for confinement, 
say to your doctor : "Doctor, if I do not need you for one 
or more hours, go and attend to other professional duties, 
and I shall call you when you think you will be needed 
more than you are now." Of course, a physician of char- 
acter, personality, and knowledge will save his patient 
this necessity by saying to her : "I shall go and return in 
one, three, or six hours, as may be necessary. Then I 
shall be able to do something for you." 

Patients who are nervous and must have their doctors 
present all the time need not be surprised at being injured 
by the doctors endeavoring to beat time in advancing or 
hurrying labor. 



Introduction 9 

There are professional cowards galore; there are pro- 
fessional men who allow their patients to dominate them ; 
and these are the men who prepare women for hospitals, 
and cause a lot of trouble — sickness and death — with 
children. 

If physicians do their duty, the causes of pain and 
distress — long labors, with mutilated mothers, and bruised 
and worn-out babies — will be removed by teaching mothers 
how to live during gestation. Instead of mothers living 
in such a way as to potentialize their labors with trouble, 
they may live so as to make gestation and confinement 
a renewal of life and the happiest time of their existence. 
A mother should be regenerated with every birth. It is 
natural for mothers to be rewarded for propagation. 

Professional ignorance, plus lay stupidity, has brought 
us to a stage of evolution wherein the dread of childbirth 
has killed out much of the mother instinct. 

The nightmare brought on by food drunkenness, plus 
twilight sleep and other drugs, instruments, lacerations, 
hospitals for repairs, injured and killed children, has 
almost prepared our women for race-suicide. 

This horrible incubus may be done away with. It is 
not necessary. ( See "Diseases of Women and Easy Child- 
birth.") 

Few mothers realize the awful responsibility, as well 
as the divine privilege, of child-bearing. Of those who 
have the comprehension I will ask: What is there that 
can equal the privilege of being the author and builder 
of a human being? I shall take pleasure in pointing out 
to those who would be real mothers — mothers of superior 
children — and who are willing to be taught, how to liqui- 
date their debt to nature in some small part, and know 
how to avoid, as far as possible, handicapping their pro- 
spective children with physical and mental weaknesses. 
To such I shall point out in what way mothers do their 
children harm and in what way they may do them good. 



10 Care op Children and Mothers 

Because of conventional customs and the general and 
prevailing ignorance, most children are brought into the 
world handicapped in many ways ; all of which is entirely 
unnecessary. 

Ignorance may be excused in the masses; but the 
leaders of society — the literary, ethical, and religious 
teachers — have no excuse. Therefore the cause of sen- 
suality in their lives, to the extent of disregarding the 
rights of their own children to demand as pure and whole- 
some a conception and gestation as the knowledge of the 
day will permit, must be ascribed to degeneracy. 

Before birth. — Prospective mothers are too often given 
over to cultivating sensuality, satisfying morbid appetites 
and desires in eating, drinking, and otherwise living un- 
wholesomely and unwisely. 

There is a dietary fallacy, quite wide-spread and 
unfortunately too generally practiced for the good of the 
children, namely: "A pregnant mother should eat for 
two." Besides this fallacy, there are others, too numerous 
to mention. It is generally believed that mothers should 
be indulged in everything they wish ; that it is unwise to 
deny them anything, especially in the eating line. As a 
result of this false teaching, many indulge themselves to 
such an extent that they soon cultivate many morbid 
desires; and, in undertaking to satisfy these, they bring 
upon themselves a very perverted state of health, both 
physical and mental. The stomach suffers greatly from 
indigestion, as a result of being oversupplied with food, 
and the prospective mother becomes very irritable. I 
have seen many who lived so irrationally that they made 
themselves and those around them miserable during their 
entire pregnancy. 

If a mother would have an obedient child — a tractable, 
lovable, reasonable, sensible, healthy, and wholesome 
child — she should live the life herself. Why should 



Introduction 11 

mothers expect temperate, moderate, and sensible children, 
when they themselves live lives just the opposite? 

A mother who holds to the childish notion that her 
wants — whether they be good, bad, or indifferent, sensible 
or silly — should be indulged to keep the child from being 
marked, should know that the worst possible mark of 
inheritance for a child is to be born with no self-control — 
with no higher ambition than to live to gratify appetites. 

We cannot expect to gather figs from thistles. Neither 
can we expect children with self-control from mothers 
who have none. 

If a mother conceives in lust, gratifies every abnormal 
craving, and keeps her nervous system at a high tension 
from food poisoning, the child must come into the world 
abnormal; for how is it possible for it to be fed by her 
blood and not suffer from the perversions from which she 
suffers? 

If mothers would have normal children, they must 
live normal lives. 

Morning sickness comes from nervous irritability due 
to food poisoning; w^hich means that the individual has 
been eating and living intemperately — more food has been 
eaten than the system can take care of properly — with the 
consequence of imperfect combustion and retention in the 
body of by-products and other waste material. 

A body surcharged with such material is in a state of 
autotoxemia — constitutional food poisoning. People in 
this physical state have catarrhal inflammation of dif- 
ferent parts of their bodies. Women have catarrhal 
inflammation of the womb, and especially of the neck of 
the womb. When they become pregnant, they are sure 
to have morning sickness; and this sickness will always 
be in keeping with the severity of the local inflammation 
as well as with the degree of constitutional impairment. 



12 Care of Children and Mothers 

It is well to know that a healthy woman will not have 
morning sickness ; also, that she will have neither painful 
menstruations nor painful labors. 

Child-bearing is as natural as breathing. When it 
takes place in a normal, healthy woman, it will be devoid 
of suffering. Painful labors, painful menstruations, and 
morning sickness are unnecessary, and are really indica- 
tions of a tvrong life, which, if continued, will lead to the 
developing of one of the many diseases for which women 
are sent to the operating- table. 

The farther from a normal standard of health the 
mother departs, the less resistance she will have to impart 
to her child. The nervous irritability of mothers during 
the gestation period must leave its impress upon the 
children born under such circumstances. After they are 
born, they must of necessity be nervous and hard to care 
for, because of their morbid inheritance. Such children 
are troubled with indigestion from the slightest provo- 
cation. 

Many, if not all, children born under conventional 
circumstances are more or less incumbered with flesh. 
Instead of weighing five or six pounds, they weigh from 
ten to twelve. Because of this overweight, mothers have 
long, tedious, and painful labors, and too frequently are 
forced into instrumental deliveries. As a sequel, such 
mothers suffer greatly from bruises, contusions, and 
lacerations. It matters not how careful the physician 
who officiates at such confinements is to be scrupulously 
clean, these women usually have enough septic infection 
to cause their milk to be unwholesome. Even if they 
escape having a light septic infection, the severe labor 
breaks down so much tissue that the blood is deranged, 
and the secretions, including the milk, are impaired to 
such an extent that, before the doctor and the nurse are 
suspicious that anything is going wrong, the baby is very 
sick. This necessitates taking the child from the mother's 



Introduction 13 

breast, which is equivalent to weaning it ; for the mothers 
are usually as much incumbered with flesh as the children. 
Because of this incumbrance, in addition to the blood 
impairment described above, they cannot be restored to a 
normal state until long after they have lost their milk. 

It is customary, under these circumstances, to use 
breast pumps. But this practice is not satisfactory. It 
has been found that when the pump is used the breasts 
are more or less bruised, and the bruising causes inflam- 
mation and suppuration. It has been found that there 
are more abscesses following the use of the pump than 
when it is not used. It has also been found that, when 
there is sufficient physical derangement of the mother to 
impair the milk, rendering it unfit for the child, the 
tendency is so strong for the secretion to dry up that all 
efforts at retaining it, by keeping the breasts emptied, are 
fruitless. 

When a child is really made sick because of the im- 
purity of its mother's milk, it should be taken from the 
breast and the milk allowed to dry up. There should be 
little danger of making a mistake; for the mother's 
physical impairment will show for itself. However, I 
have seen a few mothers whose general appearance was 
so good that a slight septic infection from an unsuspected 
tear in the neck of the womb would not have been dis- 
covered, had it not been for an unaccountable sickness in 
the children soon after birth, which caused a suspicion of 
septic poisoning, and prompted an examination which 
proved the correctness of the suspicion. 

Convulsions in nursing children, not traceable to 
objective causes, will usually be found to come from 
slight septic infections of the mothers, due to injuries 
incident to childbirth. Therefore it is well to investi- 
gate carefully all unaccountable sicknesses occurring in 
young children soon after birth, with a view to locating 
the trouble in a blood derangement of the mother, and 



14 Care of Children and Mothers 

discovering, if possible, whether it comes from septic 
poisoning. I am quite satisfied that to this cause a 
majority of the imbecile, mentally unsound, and idiotic 
owe their misfortunes. If this belief is correct, it is 
very important that everyone should know of these facts, 
and endeavor to spread the information, so that such a 
calamity may befall as few helpless infants as possible. 

When a mother's milk is suspected of causing the 
illness of a child, it should be proscribed at once. 

Children may be made sick by too frequent feeding, or 
overfeeding, of the purest milk from the healthiest of 
mothers. Physicians have no excuse for not being able to 
distinguish between a sickness coming from impure milk 
and one coming from an oversupply of pure milk. Even 
intelligent mothers and nurses should be able to make the 
distinction. 

When a child is sick from an oversupply, it usually 
has a history of health. It has been thriving. Everyone 
has remarked how well it looks and how fast it has been 
growing. It has a season of constipation ; for one of the 
indications of an oversupply is sluggish bowels. For a 
while before the sickness comes there are curds in the 
stools, and these milk curds increase until the child is 
sick. 

When a child is made sick from impure milk, it does 
not thrive from the start. That is, if the mother's milk 
is lacking in some of the important elements, the child 
does not do badly, neither does it do well ; it simply does 
not thrive as the parents and friends wish it to. As time 
runs on, the baby becomes restless, and those taking care 
of it begin to suspect that it does not get enough food. Its 
face takes on a withered appearance; it shows more and 
more signs of marasmus. At last all decide that the 
mother's milk does not nourish, and a change to cow's 
milk soon proves that all the child needed was more 
nourishment. This is a simple case. Another type pre- 



Introduction 15 

sents about the same symptoms, with stomach trouble 
added. The child vomits occasionally, and has unmistak- 
able colic or pain in the abdomen, and sometimes a slight 
diarrhea. These little sicknesses do not amount to much ; 
yet the child does not thrive* and, as in the case of the 
second type described, the emaciation becomes so severe 
that resort is had to artificial feeding, with the result 
that the child improves and the mother's milk is allowed 
to dry up. 

The real septic-poisoning case thrives perhaps for 
a week, and possibly for two weeks. It may take the 
mother's blood from one to two weeks to become so con- 
taminated that it poisons the child. The first evidence of 
a sick baby will be that it has a spasm. Of course, every- 
one is surprised; the mother has been getting on fairly 
well, and she is out of bed ; she does not feel so well, per- 
haps, as she did at other labors; yet there is nothing 
worth mentioning to complain about. No one should 
make a mistake about the manner of disease coming from 
septic poisoning. 

Of course, it is unfortunate for a mother not to be able 
to nurse her child, but there are worse calamities. The 
possibility of bringing on any one of the misfortunes re- 
ferred to above is one of these — one that should cause a 
mother to decide very quickly that her duty is to stop 
nursing. 

Taking the child from the breast, under the circum- 
stances referred to above, forces artificial feeding on one 
ill equipped with digestive power and bodily resistance 
to meet the requirements. All such children have entered 
the world handicapped by functional derangements that 
are liable to stay with them throughout life. These 
children have such low resistance that they are made 
sick by every ill wind, and they are very fortunate if 
they do not meet with a sickness severe enough to cause 
their death before they are through teething. Yet, every- 



16 Care of Children and Mothers 

thing considered, artificial feeding offers the greatest 
hope for them, when the mothers have septic infection. 

A heavily incumbered child is necessarily an abnormal 
child. It is not only started in life with an excess of 
tissue, but it must, because of its great size, suffer from 
unusual bruising at birth. This bruising means much 
breaking-down of tissue, which adds to the work of its 
eliminating organs. Then, if its fretfulness, caused by the 
soreness coming from the extra bruising, is interpreted 
as a hunger, and the child is fed to excess for a few days, 
a fatal sickness may be brought on. A slight sickness — a 
little indigestion — is often converted into a fatal sickness 
in a few days, through unnecessary feeding. 

Another enervating factor in child-life is fear. Many 
things cause fear. In some instances the mother may 
be depressed all through the gestation period because of 
worry about financial matters; or she may be fearful or 
anxious about the safety of herself or her child. She may 
dread labor. 

Some mothers are subjected to more or less abuse. 
Others live in unwholesome localities. Because of igno- 
rance, there is not enough attention given to ventilation, 
and beds are often old and unfit for use. 

The world is full of "Job's comforters" of all kinds. 
Those who disturb the peace of mind of prospective 
mothers are, however, the vilest; and I wish my opinion 
of them to get to their ears, if possible. They certainly 
are the devil's own. They make a business of retailing 
every story they ever heard of unfortunate labors to all 
the pregnant women they can reach. If they read of 
someone dying, or hear of a desperate case of labor, where 
instruments were used, the child born dead, and the mother 
lacerated; or where abscess of the breast, milk-leg, 
peritonitis, pelvic abscess, or any other unhappy ending, 
developed, they immediately go to every pregnant woman 
accessible, tell her all they have heard, and expatiate 



Introduction 17 

on the story as much as possible. They take a fiendish 
delight in creating as much fear and anxiety as they 
possibly can. These morbid-minded, senseless creatures 
are the most despicable people on earth, and those who 
tolerate a second visit from them are not much to be 
pitied. 

Women who live as they should are not nervous 
enough to pay much attention to such stories. Besides, 
they are too intelligent to associate with story-tellers. 
But the women who do not know how to take care of 
themselves, and are very nervous from wrong life, are 
often driven to desperation by these horrible telltales. 

It is not uncommon for mothers to be abused sexually 
by ignorant and sensual husbands. This should not be. 
Not a few women meet with miscarriages and premature 
labors because of this abuse; and they are wholly ignorant 
of the cause. Children are frequently rendered so deli- 
cate by this abuse to their mothers that they are born 
dead, or die soon after birth. Many children are born 
with fair vital resistance, but because of this prenatal 
abuse to their mothers they do not have sufficient vital 
power to resist the ordinary influences incident to the 
lives of young babies ; hence they require careful nursing 
and extra watchfulness to keep their digestions in order. 
Mothers abused in this way do not furnish proper milk 
for their children, and are inclined to lose the secretion 
very soon after the child is born. 

During the hot weather nursing mothers should not 
be subjected to sex or any other avoidable excitement. It 
is a shame that civilization needs to be cautioned on the 
sex subject. But wiiat I am writing now on this subject 
will be a surprise to many intelligent readers. Is this 
not a sad reflection on our popular education? 

Mothers should be allowed to forget the sex subject 
from conception to the weaning of the child. How many 
are? How many of our most intelligent people know that 



18 Care op Children and Mothers 

it requires as great care to bring forth ideal children as 
it does to bring forth ideal stock — horses, cattle, dogs, etc. ? 
Does the reader say that all intelligent people know this? 
If intelligent people do know this, why do they not employ 
the best means known for child-raising? Is man so perfect 
that he does not need to be improved? Is it a mark of 
wisdom for people to beget, gestate, and rear children 
under influences that would fail to bring forth good 
stock — in fact, if practiced in stock-raising, would cause 
the stock to degenerate? 

Is there one child in a thousand — yes, in ten thou- 
sand — correctly conceived, gestated, born, and raised? 
If there is, it would be a pleasure to know about it. Do 
we realize that humanity, as we see it today, is the product 
of ignorant haphazard; that man's possibilities receive 
absolutely no intelligent prenatal consideration and culti- 
vation — in truth, neither pre- nor postnatal consideration 
of a scientific, eugenic nature? Yet, in spite of that fact, 
man's intrinsic worth keeps him from deteriorating ; and, 
indeed, it causes him to forge ahead a little. This being 
true, can anyone even imagine to what heights of perfec- 
tion he could rise if he were subjected for a few genera- 
tions to correct rules of development? 

Few parents know that family quarrels are injurious 
to unborn children, as well as to those who are growing 
in the home atmosphere. Few mothers know that every 
time they give way to harshness and impatience, speak 
crossly and fretfully to their children, or lose their 
tempers, they are breaking down their children's resist- 
ance, weakening their hearts, and stupefying their brains. 

Children thrive in an atmosphere of love, and it is 
positively necessary for perfect development. In an 
atmosphere of impatience, envy, hate, and fault-finding, 
the seeds of physical and mental disease spring up, and 
the delicately organized children, with nervous mental 
temperaments, die of cholera infantum, diphtheria, in- 



Introduction 19 

fantile paralysis, and other diseases. That is what con- 
vention and the burial certificates say ; but truth says they 
die from want of love. 

After a child has eaten heartily of an ordinary meal, 
if the home atmosphere is unpleasant; if the mother 
allows herself to show a feeling of impatience; if she 
speaks to the child in a tone of unkindness, the child may 
be forced into a depressed state of mind, which is always 
followed by indigestion. The food decomposes, and 
ptomaine poisoning may result. Just what form or type 
the disease may take, following indigestion, depends on 
the environment. It may be a gastritis, or, if the environ- 
ment is favorable — if the atmospheric conditions favor 
zymosis — it may be scarlet fever or diphtheria. 

There is more sickness among children of the nervous 
mental temperament due to mental depression brought 
upon them by unkindness of parents, guardians, and 
teachers than from any other one cause. 

When children of strong bodies and mediocre minds 
are subjected to the disease influences referred to, the 
manifestation is in crime instead of sickness. Instead of 
pining away and actually dying of tuberculosis or some 
other consuming disease, as many with the delicate 
nervous temperament do, they live, and the fruitage of 
abuse is the building of crime. 

The unkindness of parents to children is fearfully far- 
reaching. Parents should become enlightened on this 
subject; for, unless they do, they cannot love — indeed, 
they cannot be kind. Love and kindness, to be true and 
lasting, must be founded on knowledge. We must know 
our duty. 

I surely have covered enough ground to convince the 
reader that the causes of sickness in children are many 
and far-reaching; and many causes are of such a nature 
that parents must be informed before they can be over- 
come. The reader should see also how very absurd it is 



20 Care of Children and Mothers 

to give drugs for the cure of a disease that is due to 
prenatal mismanagement. 

Mothers should be well balanced — well poised. They 
should govern more by example than by precept. It is not 
well to see every error, and by no means should mothers 
lose the respect of their children by detective work. Cor- 
recting must be done with enough tact to leave the im- 
pression on the child's mind that it is a very disagreeable 
duty, and distresses the parent as much as it pains the 
child. 

Parents should try to be their children's best friends. 
Unfortunately, this is not always true. 

Any style of living that is not conducive to the 
development of first-class health in the ordinary individual 
is certainly unfit for mothers during their gestation 
period. Any life that is not ideal leaves its impress on the 
child; and this impress may be set down as one of the 
numerous causes leading to stomach and bowel derange- 
ments in young children, and to much ill-health of a dif- 
ferent nature in older ones. 

Any influence not building in its nature strikes at 
the very citadel of life; namely, metabolism — digestion 
and assimilation. Life and development depend upon the 
power to take care of food, and this power resides in 
the nervous system. 

After birth. — All mothers should know that they must 
avoid overheating their bodies — avoid excitement, anger, 
overeating; in fact, avoid everything tending to derange 
the quality of their milk. 

It is a matter of record that angry mothers have 
killed their children by nursing them while in the heat of 
passion. Children are in danger of being thrown into 
convulsions by nursing milk from the breast of an angry 
mother, or from a mother whose blood is poisoned by 
worry. Any influence that depresses the mother, or 



Introduction 21 

excites her, or overstimulates her, ruins her milk; and 
this makes nursing children sick. 

It is not uncommon for mothers to give young children 
a little food from the family table. It is so cute to see the 
baby eat! This is the cause of much stomach and bowel 
trouble in babies. 

That every person, old or young, high or low, rich or 
poor, takes into his body every day in hot weather more 
or less food that has taken on retrograde change, there 
can be no doubt. This change in food is supposed to be 
rendered innoxious by cooking; that is, if meat has 
soured — become tainted — thorough cooking is supposed to 
overcome this change. The same is true of vegetables and 
fruit. But, in spite of cooking and every other precaution, 
as stated above, everyone takes more or less decomposition 
into his system every day; and, if he does not suffer on 
account of this, it is because he has enough vital resistance 
to overcome the poison. 

The retrograde change in food is decomposition, and 
this change is brought about by fermentation. Fermen- 
tation may be divided into two types; namely, physio- 
logical and pathological. The converting of starch into 
grape sugar by ptyalin is a type of physiological fermenta- 
tion. To bring this change about, it is necessary that 
the starch, or the food containing starch, be thoroughly 
masticated and mixed with the saliva. If the food is 
swallowed without mixing it with saliva, the starch takes 
on pathological fermentation. 

When a child is fed beyond its digestive power, a path- 
ological fermentation takes place. If the child's resistance 
is not broken down, and it is fed within its digestive 
capacity, bacteria do no harm. Are they not present at 
all times from the beginning to the end of every life ? This 
being true, it is unnecessary to discuss the subject. 

In this connection it may be well to say that the best 
prophylaxis against diseases of the stomach and bowels 



22 Care op Children and Mothers 

of all young animals is the mother's milk. There is an 
inherent property found in the milk of the human mother, 
and in the milk of all mammals, which protects the nurs- 
lings. Health — full health — is all that is required to 
insure this great prophylaxis. 

It is declared that there are antibodies found in the 
blood and milk of animals, and that these antibodies have 
the power to destroy bacteria. If milk is boiled, this 
natural protection is lost. If it is not boiled, this prop- 
erty is not destroyed by digestion ; hence it enters the body 
of the child and becomes an ally of health; or, in other 
words, it increases the bodily resistance. 

The reason why I am going to such great length in 
pointing out the many detrimental influences to child-life 
is because it is necessary for the mothers to know all, or 
they will not know what is necessary to do in order to 
secure the greatest health and mental development. 

If mothers know that ill-health and handicapped minds 
are gifts from them to their children — gifts wholly un- 
necessary and avoidable — they will get busy, and learn to 
live in such a way as to develop healthy children. 

Homes must be kept in wholesome condition. Doors 
and windows should be wide-open in summer, and the 
house must be well aired in the winter time. Everything 
in the line of food disposed to ferment should be kept 
on ice or in cold water ; and food products that are unfit 
to eat should be burned, instead of being put in open con- 
tainers and left in the back-yard to decompose, feed flies, 
and send out offensive odors. Such gases are not only 
offensive, but they are poisonous, and the filth draws flies 
and favors their multiplying. The flies then become dis- 
tributors of decomposition by carrying their filthy load 
to all parts of the country. 

Too little attention is given to flies, rats, mice, cats, 
and dogs. Those who are in the chicken business, or 
who have anything to do with the raising of animals, do 



Introduction 23 

not have the knowledge they should have to protect them- 
selves and their families from the diseases which these 
animals are capable of bringing to them. 

There is positively no excuse for having flies in one's 
home. Waste from the kitchen that cannot be fed to 
animals should be burned. Odors bring flies, and there 
is no excuse for odors. If everything that makes an odor 
is burned, there will be no food for flies. 

Eats and mice are capable of carrying a deadly load of 
decomposition into any house accessible to them. 

They load their bodies with decomposition, and, when 
convenient, deposit a part of it on food that is to be eaten 
by people who have not the slightest suspicion of the 
danger they are in. The domestic finds that a mouse has 
nibbled at a cake, a pie, a piece of cheese, or some other 
food. She thinks nothing of trimming off the nibbled 
portion and serving it to the family. If she thinks any- 
thing about it, it will be to congratulate herself on her 
economy. Perhaps the mouse has but recently left the 
carcass of a dead animal. These animals have the habit 
of storing food, and their bodies are always charged with 
foul enzootic and zymotic poisons; for their food and 
habitations abound in such poisons. 

The domestic animals carry disease to children from 
house to house. Our health officers quarantine houses, 
and restrict the going and coming of the human beings; 
but dogs and cats, rats and mice, flies and other insects, 
are as free as the air. 

The household pet — the dog or cat — is allowed to stay 
on the bed to comfort little Johnnie or Lizzie Jane while 
he or she is confined to the house with diphtheria or 
scarlet fever, or possibly a suppressed case of small-pox. 
Of course, doggy or kitty must sleep in the arms of our 
sick boy or girl ; and when the animal is tired of its con- 
finement, it leaves the house and visits the neighborhood. 
The neighboring children cannot visit their sick friend. 



24 Care of Children and Mothers 

If they did, the mighty health law would meet them at the 
door and say : "You cannot enter here. It is my duty to 
protect you and all others who are too ignorant to know 
how to protect themselves." Of course, these little folk 
are sorry, and, to show their love for their sick friend, 
they make a special effort to be kind to the doggy or kitty. 
It is taken in their arms, loved and petted, given lots of 
food, and, because the little animal is lonesome, it is per- 
suaded to stay in the homes of the friends as much as 
possible, until its master is well again. 

Dogs have strong atavistic tendencies. They may be 
washed, combed, and perfumed as daintily as possible; 
yet, if the opportunity presents itself, these clean, per- 
fumed dogs crawl into a carcass and wallow in it. They 
appear to be unable to satisfy themselves, when they have 
an opportunity of this kind. They usually act as though 
they wished to carry all the stench possible, for fear they 
might never have another opportunity. This is positively 
a dog habit, and one which is certainly not conducive to 
keeping a family of children healthy. 

This knowledge should be in the possession of every 
family, so that people who want to be clean and avoid 
disease influences may know how to do so. 

There is no doubt in my mind, after years of careful 
observation, that it is dangerous to the health of children 
to raise them in the house with cats and dogs. If animals 
must be indulged in, they should have a house of their 
own, and children and animals should meet in the open — 
on the lawn or in the field — but should never be housed 
together. 

It is well to remember that flies, rats, mice, germs, and 
parasites are scavengers and are not found where cleanli- 
ness abounds. 



Introduction 25 

DIET IN PREGNANCY 

What should a pregnant woman eat? 

There is a popular idea that because a woman is preg- 
nant she should gormandize. "Eat for two/' is the popular 
way of expressing it. This is a mistake; for overeating 
builds enervation, enervation inhibits elimination, and, 
as a consequence, more or less auto-intoxication is taking 
place all the time, and vital organs are unable to perform 
their functions properly. 

Heart.— The rheumatic heart is liable to be so abused 
by conventional stuffing that the patient will die before 
pregnancy is completed, or from the shock of labor. Many 
such subjects will suffer much from dropsical infiltration 
of the legs, and sometimes from general dropsy. 

Kidneys. — Those with an inclination to kidney de- 
rangement will have the function of the kidneys so 
impaired that uremic coma and convulsions are liable to 
complicate labor and often cause death. 

Varicose veins. — The veins in the legs of those of 
relaxed muscular habit of body will enlarge and give 
much discomfort. After one or two pregnancies, women 
of this character are troubled all the time with varicose 
veins, which often develop varicose ulcers on the ankles. 

Subinvolution. — The womb fails to return to the 
normal size, but remains large, heavy, and liable to take 
on fibroid degeneration. The circulation in the womb is 
so impaired that injuries at childbirth do not heal, but 
remain ulcerating and throwing off a disagreeable dis- 
charge. 

"Eating for two" costs many times the worth of the 
pleasure. 

Long, tedious, painful labors are liable to be the price 
paid by everyone who foolishly follows custom in building 
and indulging an abnormal appetite. 



26 Care of Children and Mothers 

Besides the immediate troubles above enumerated, the 
ground- work is laid for many future diseases; namely, 
tumors, cancers, etc. 

All that has been stated above should be such common 
and popular knowledge that for me to write it would be 
inexcusable platitude. Why is it not? Because the 
medical profession is so busy medicating and operating 
on victims of the indiscretion of eating for two that many 
have forgotten that there is a cause, and that this cause 
might be prevented. 

What to eat. — Use fruit, and nothing but fruit, for one 
meal a day — always fresh, uncooked fruit when it can be 
had. How much? Do not stuff! One or two apples, if 
large ones ; if medium-sized, two or three ; and other fruits 
in like quantity. In cold weather add two ounces of the 
sweet fruits — either raisins, dates, or figs. 

If fruit is eaten for breakfast, lunch may be four 
ounces of well-toasted, whole-wheat bread and butter, 
followed with a glass of milk or two cups of teakettle tea. 

A few proper lunches. — A piece of pie and a glass of 
milk ; plain cake and ice-cream ; cake and a cup of custard ; 
toast bread and a combination salad; strawberries, or 
other berries, with toast and butter; cottage cheese or 
two ounces of cream cheese, with fruit; rice and milk; 
two glasses of buttermilk ; in cold weather, four ounces of 
raisins, dates, or figs, and a pint of milk; or fresh fruit 
in place of milk. 

Dinners. — Dinner may be eaten at noon, if desired, 
and what I have suggested for lunch may be taken for 
supper. 

Dinners may be any kind of fresh meat. Lamb and 
chicken are the best. However, any fresh meat desired 
may be used, with two cooked, non-starchy vegetables 
and a combination salad. (See the "Food" book for lists 
of non-starchy vegetables and starchy foods; also for 
salad mixtures.) 



Introduction 27 

Nuts and cheese may be substituted for meat. Forty 
half-meats of the pecan, or twenty to thirty half-meats 
of the walnut, and two ounces of cheese. Occasionally 
for dinner drop meat and nuts, and have baked potatoes, 
navy beans, butter beans, dry peas, corn bread, or any of 
the starchy foods listed. With these starchy foods the 
non-starchy vegetables and salad may be eaten. The salad, 
when eaten with starches, should be dressed with salt 
and olive oil. 

There positively should be no eating between meals, 
and all irritations must be avoided. The pregnant woman 
must rest. Early to bed should be the rule. Poise should 
be practiced, and the best books only should be read. 

Ectopic pregnancy (abdominal pregnancy). — Preg- 
nancies taking place in the fallopian tubes may be 
detected very early in those women who do not abuse 
themselves by overeating. 

When a pregnant woman is imprudent in eating, she 
is liable to have indigestion, gas, and pain in her abdomen. 
These symptoms may mask the symptoms of an ectopic 
pregnancy and delay proper treatment. 

Indigestion may mask the early symptoms of miscar- 
riage and prevent the proper treatment until too late. 

Prospective mothers should eat in such a manner as 
to insure perfect comfort and health ; then, if discomfort 
starts up in the lower bowels or pelvic region, the physi- 
cian should be called and discover as early as possible 
what the symptoms mean. Thus a miscarriage may be 
avoided, and if the pain comes from tubal pregnancy, the 
proper treatment may be given at once. 

If more on what a pregnant woman should do and 
should not do is desired, read "Diseases of Women and 
Easy Childbirth." 



28 Care op Children and Mothers 

DIET AFTER CONFINEMENT 

A mother should eat nothing for the first twenty-four 
hours after childbirth, unless the labor has been very 
light, and she is not tired out. Baked apple, or a little 
buttermilk, or a glass of grape juice may be taken within 
three to six hours after the child is born, if the mother 
can take it with a relish and really desires something. 
Under no circumstances should she take anything into her 
stomach until she has a keen relish. Any kind of milk, or 
fresh fruit that is not tart, may be taken morning, noon, 
and night for the first three days. After the bowels have 
moved, the mother is to eat just about what she was in the 
habit of eating before confinement, only in smaller quanti- 
ties. Mothers should always avoid overeating, because, if 
they disturb the stomach and bring on indigestion, it will 
affect the child, provided the child nurses the mother. 

Mothers who have taken care of themselves during the 
pregnant period — mothers who have lived as they should 
before childbirth — will have very little trouble, and many 
of them can begin to eat the food they are in the habit of 
taking, within twenty or forty-eight hours after their 
children are born. 

It is a mistake for mothers to drink beer, or resort to 
any kind of drink, etc., for causing a larger flow of milk, 
This belongs to the old regime which should be placed in 
the obsolete class. When a woman is normal and eats 
normally, she should not need anything to cause her to 
give more milk; for whatever is taken in this line has a 
tendency to change the quantity and quality; hence it 
should not be permitted. 



Introduction 29 

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE EXPECTANT MOTHER 

Avoid overeating. Be cheerful, hopeful. Avoid people 
icho talk discouragingly. Remember that all mankind 
have been born, and that the happiest and healthiest 
women are mothers of large families. 

Take exercise in the open air every day. 

Do not form the habit of drinking soft drinks and eat- 
ing ice-cream. Control appetite and passion for the child's 
sake. The sex life should be controlled during pregnancy. 
Indulgence should be limited. Where the mind cannot be 
controlled, indulgence is safer than a morbid mind. It is 
well for parents to remember that miscarriages and abor- 
tions are often brought on by such indulgences. 

Morning sickness is a nervous derangement, and is 
largely under the control of the will. When persistent, 
there may be inflammation of the neck of the womb. Scari- 
fication will often relieve at once. 

Bowels should move daily. Use laxative foods — 
prunes, figs, pears, spinach, onions; and drink freely of 
water. 

Diarrhea may be controlled by a short fast. 

Urine. — Have the doctor examine it every month. 

Daily sponge-baths, with brisk friction. 

Avoid cold-water bathing. 

Nipples may be hardened by washing with alum 
water and gentle rubbing daily. 

Inverted nipples should be drawn out daily and 
hardened by handling. 

A breast-pump may be used to draw the nipples. 

Abdominal rubbing brings comfort and strengthens 
the muscles. 

If there is a tendency for the hair to fall out, use tar 
soap and wash the hair twice a week. 



30 Care op Children and Mothers 

Leucorrhea should be controlled by douches of warm 
salt water — one tablespoonful of salt to two quarts of 
water. 

Corsets should not be worn. Maternity corsets may be 
worn, but no corsets or supports are desirable. 

NECESSITIES FOR CONFINEMENT 

Hand-basins — one for hot and one for cold water. 

Pitchers — one full of hot and one full of cold water. 

Towels — more than needed. 

Bed-pan. 

Slop- jar. 

A two- or three-quart fountain syringe. 

One or two hot-water bags. One will do if an ordinary 
jug, with a good cork stopper, is furnished. 

Rubber or oil-cloth one and one-half yards square; or 
newspapers may be quilted or tacked together. Prepare 
enough sheets to allow one change every day, if necessary 
for perfect cleanliness. 

Bath thermometer. 

Absorbent cotton. 

Prepare twenty to thirty yards of cheese-cloth as fol- 
lows: Boil for an hour, run through clothes-wringer, 
then wrap in paper and bake until dry. Do not bake the 
cloth and paper enough to burn. 

Safety-pins. 

One pair of long w T hite stockings for mother to wear 
during delivery. 

Have prepared, and cold, five gallons of boiled water. 

Salt for douching purposes, in place of the customary 
mercury tablets. 

Vaseline. 

Talcum powder. 

Bedding. 



Care of Children 



Chapter I 




^l^gF^ 



AT BIRTH 

S THE child is being born, it is the duty 
of doctor or midwife to protect its mouth 

A and nose from the fluids that are liable to 
flood its face, which, if inhaled, will at least 
choke it and cause much coughing, and may 
be the last straw in causing the death of a 
very much exhausted child. Where the labor 
is a week or more in advance of full time, it will not pro 
gress so rapidly as it should, and an endeavor to hurry 
it may cause the mother to suffer more than necessary. 
This tires* both mother and child more than natural. 

DRY LABOR 

Where there is an early or premature expulsion of the 
fluid, and the labor is not completed in a very short time, 
the child may be killed by the severe expulsive uterine 
contractions. Often only a part of the fluid is prematurely 
discharged, enough being left to prevent the weight of the 
contractions falling, or being expended, on the child's 
body. 

A prolonged labor — or one that is short, but preceded 
by premature expulsion of all the protecting fluid — 
usually ends with an exhausted child. When a child is 
born in this state, it should receive immediate attention. 
If breathing fails to start, the child should be dipped alter- 



32 (./ARE of Children and Mothers 

nately in hot and then in cold water, or any other resus- 
citating measures may be used. 

BATHING— AIR AS WELL AS WATER 

Bathing. — When breathing starts, the child should be 
anointed with warm oil, wrapped in warmed cotton, and 
covered well, leaving enough opening at its face to admit 
all the fresh air needed. No attempt at bathing should 
be made until the child has had time to react fully, even 
if it requires one, two, or three days. The mauling that 
children often get at the first bath is quite enough to kill 
those that are born worn out because of unusual or 
unnatural births. 

Natural labors do not injure either mother or child; 
therefore there is no reason why the baby should not be 
bathed at once, and, after resting for three hours, be 
given its first meal — allowed to nurse. 

The bath may be given daily from the time of birth. 
Soaking in water is not bathing. Many young children 
have their vital energy soaked out of them by mothers 
who "love to see the baby splash." 

Children should be bathed quickly in warm — not hot- 
water; always in a warm room, and close to a stove or 
register. A mild soap may be used or not. The use of soap 
is not an unmixed good. The more soap is used, the more 
must be used, because it removes the skin's natural 
power to shed whatever soils it. This is just one more 
example of the evils of paternalism. The skin would clean 
itself, if that particular function were not pampered by 
clothes, and soaked and soaped out of existence. 

About three times a week it would be well to anoint 
the baby's body with warm olive oil ; then rub it off with 
cotton or a soft cloth. 

No harm can come from rubbing a child's body with 
a soft towel or the open hand. Indeed, children thrive 
on such treatment; for it tends to keep the skin in good 



Bathing 33 

condition by keeping up a vigorous capillary circulation 
and skin functioning. 

When should a child be bathed? — When it needs* it. 
If the child is to be soaked in a tub of water, the bath 
should be given three hours before or three hours after 
eating. According to this suggestion, the baby cared for 
according to modern methods would not get a bath at all ; 
for the every-two-hour feeding would give no opportunity. 
Those advocating frequent feedings say to bathe one hour 
after feeding ; of course, that is the farthest possible time 
after or before meals. The proper bathing, however, may 
be given at any time when convenient or necessary. 

The temperature of the bath water should be at first, 
and for a week or two, about blood heat. Gradually 
accustom the child to cool water. Avoid the use of cold 
water with children who have weak hearts and circulation. 
Such children are frequently born of autotoxemic parents, 
and often they are much incumbered with flesh. 

The training into the use of water at a temperature 
below sixty degrees Fahrenheit should not be undertaken 
until the child has passed its second year, and then in the 
warm summer weather only. A tendency for cold hands 
and feet should warn against the use of cold water. 

Linen wash-cloths and absorbent cotton should be 
used. A sponge is hard to clean and not a good substitute 
for a wash-cloth. The material should be soft; and if the 
child can be kept sweet and clean without soap, do not 
use any; for soap ruins the self-cleansing functions of 
the skin. The use of soap for cleansing purposes-, 
especially for exposed parts of the body, appears to be 
unavoidable. The soap ? exposure, etc., certainly, in the 
course of time, work a wonderful change; for proof of 
which compare the hands and face of any grown person 
with the protected parts of his body. Wash-cloths should 
be washed and boiled daily. Dirty wash-cloths have 
caused much eye disease in children. 



34 Care op Children and Mothers 

Nature has not passed a law compelling a routine to 
be carried out regarding bathing, etc. ; hence, do not sub- 
ject a sick child to any routine, except prescribing food, 
and allowing the child water to drink, and perfect quiet. 

Care of the genitalia. — Care should always be used in 
washing and cleansing the genitalia of children. Eough 
cloths and careless rubbing must be avoided. 

The female child should be carefully washed with 
warm water and salt — a half-teaspoonful of salt to a half- 
pint of warm water. The washing of the genitalia should 
be done with cotton. Sponges should not be used, because 
they are liable not to be well cleansed. If absorbent cot- 
ton be used,* it should be thrown away after each wash- 
ing, if perfect cleanliness is desired. 

The male child should have the foreskin pushed back, 
and the glans washed or freed from all secretions or cheesy 
accumulation. If the foreskin is adherent and cannot be 
freed by ordinary pushing, call for the assistance of the 
family doctor; for occasionally it requires professional 
skill to make the separation, the adhesions being so firm. 
Circumcision. — Where the foreskin is long, and the 
opening so small that pushing it back is made impossible, 
circumcision is said to be necessary. This, however, is 
not true; for gradual dilation will overcome the con- 
stricted state. If more force is required than can be 
given by the mother or nurse, the physician may be called. 
All that is necessary for him to do is to introduce the 
blades of an ordinary hemostatic forceps and quickly but 
firmly dilate by opening the blades; or, if a regulation 
dilator is handy, so much the better — use it, and make the 
dilation thorough. It pains the child, of course; but the 
work should be done quickly and well ; and, aside from a 



♦To save the possible accident of a stopped-up sewer, it may 
be well to state right here that cotton should always be squeezed 
out of the water and burned up — never allow it to be emptied, 
with the wash water, into the water closet. 



Circumcision 35 

few seconds of pain at the time of dilating, there is noth- 
ing to this operation. It is superior in every way to 
cutting off the foreskin. It is a mistaken idea that the 
foreskin should be removed because, when long, it favors 
the accumulation of secretions and development of disease. 
Of course, if cleanly habits cannot be taught, an operation 
should be performed, as a substitute for carelessness. 
When it is too much trouble to keep the ears, nose, and 
toes clean, cut them off. When the teeth ache because of 
carelessness and lack of cleanliness, pull them out. When 
any part of the body offends by demanding cleanliness, 
amputate it. One of these demands is a reasonable as 
another, and just as necessary. 

Teach children to keep their bodies clean. The genital 
organs must be kept clean. Teach children to wash them 
as often as the face, eyes, and ears are washed. Careless* 
ness in this regard is appalling, and causes much 
trouble. One organ of the body neglected becomes dis- 
eased, and, through sympathy, other organs become 
lowered in their efficiency. A neglected skin or surface of 
the body leads to eye, ear, nose, and genital derangements. 
Keep the entire surface of the body clean (this means 
eyes, ears, genitals, mouth, and teeth), and most of the 
diseases that make children's lives unhappy will be con- 
trolled; and, if proper diet be added, most causes for 
disease will be removed. 

Teach children the need of keeping their genital organs 
clean, and general cleanliness will follow as a natural 
consequence. If this is done, a desire for self-abuse will 
be removed. The irritation caused by lack of cleanliness 
causes children to rub the itching parts. In time, the 
rubbing and handling of these organs, to give relief to the 
itching caused by morbid irritation, end in onanism. Igno- 
rance and filth generate disease and crime. 



36 Care of Children and Mothers 

If man should go naked, he would escape the so-called 
contagious diseases of childhood; also the mucous-mem- 
brane, skin, and other diseases of adult life. 

Clothing and hot houses make bathing necessary. The 
skin that is not bathed as it should be has a characteristic 
odor, and, if examined microscopically, no doubt there 
would be found a moss or fungus growth that favors the 
development of skin diseases and diseases of the mucous 
membrane lining the cavities. 

Because of clothes that shut out light and air, much 
bathing is necessary, and, when neglected, malodors 
develop. 

Air bath. — From birth all normal, natural babies 
should be given an air bath daily. The temperature of the 
room must be summer heat, and the very young child 
should be rubbed with the open hand, gently, at first, 
while it is becoming accustomed to the air and light. At 
first the child must be watched. If it has low resistance, 
its body will grow cold, and it must be returned to its 
clothes or covering; then in a few days try it again, and 
have the room warmer. 

After a child has become accustomed to the air bath, 
it may be placed in slightly screened sunlight for a few 
minutes. Increase the power of sunlight, and the length 
of time the child is kept in it, to suit the child's growing 
resistance. A thick, soft comforter or blanket may be 
spread on the floor in a room where light and heat have 
been adjusted to the child's needs. Place the baby on its 
belly (Dr. C. E. Page's method), and allow it to stay 
on the belly rather than the back. The Page method works 
out well. Children walk and run much earlier. 

Children early accustomed to the air and sun baths 
will escape the so-called contagious diseases. Why? 
Because these diseases are encouraged by clothes and over- 
heating the surface of the body. It is hard to say which is 
most health-building — the air, light, or cold. No doubt 



Am Bath 37 

the best results are experienced when the three are 
properly blended. 

Many children find ill-health and an early grave be- 
cause of overheating and lack of air on the surface of their 
bodies. 

Airing. — Besides the nude air and sun bath recom- 
mended for young children, they should be taken out of 
doors into the open air every day fit for them to be out — 
every sunny day — in any and all, except very cold, 
weather. Children should not be chilled. Children who 
are allowed to chill daily, or allowed to get chilly at night, 
will soon be sick; for wasting nerve energy daily or 
nightly in resisting cold will soon put a child in a state of 
enervation that precludes digestion. 

School children who sit for hours with cold feet will 
fail to digest their food; and soon indigestion, coughs, 
colds, catarrh, tonsilitis, adenoids, etc., will follow. 

The nerve energy of children must not be wasted by 
allowing them to chill frequently, but all children should 
be taken into the air, and kept there as long as possible, 
every day. 

CARE OF THE BED 

Children must be kept clean. They should not be 
soaked — bathed to death — but their clothing must be 
sweet and clean. Their beds must be clean and well aired. 
A bed that gives out the odor of urine is not fit for a child 
to sleep in. Oil-silk or oil-cloth should be used to prevent 
the mattress from getting soiled. But these oil-cloths 
should also receive attention. They must be washed with 
soap, and they should be put in the sun for a day every 
little while. A child's bed should be opened to the sun. 
There should be two sets of bed clothing: one for use in 
the day, the other for use at night after hanging in the 
sun all day; and, if there is no sun, then the clothing 
should be hung where it will be perfectly dry and thor- 



38 Care of Children and Mothers 

oughly aired. Pillows can be worked overtime. It would 
be well to have oil-silk to cover the pillows, so that milk 
or water spilled on them will not penetrate and dampen 
the feathers. The oil-silk may be between the pillow-slip 
and the pillow. Oil-cloth or rubber sheeting may be used. 
Cleanliness is more far-reaching than prayer under 
such circumstances. The mother who will neglect her 
child in every way except prayer will probably send her 
child to heaven very early. 

CARE OF THE EYES 

Carelessness in washing, and possibly using a wash- 
cloth that has not been properly cleaned, has caused much 
eye disease. Great care is necessary to avoid such a con- 
tingency. There should never be any trouble with the 
eyes of infants. 

In these days of much medical delusion we hear that 
children should have a weak solution of nitrate of silver 
dropped into their eyes almost as soon as they are born, 
to prevent ophthalmia neonatorum — a venereal inflamma- 
tion of the eyes of new-born babies. Doctors who gain 
their experience from free clinics, hospitals, and slum 
practice become deluded with the idea that all of man- 
kind are tainted with venereal diseases. Their delusion 
should not be taken too seriously. 

There may be a little danger of this infection in the 
slums, but the danger is nil among the representative, bet- 
ter class of poor as well as among the well-to-do of this 
country. 

The eyes should be bathed with warm water. When 
there is irritation, a little salt may be put into the water, 
using absorbent cotton. It is a great mistake to use the 
regulation wash-cloth to cleanse eyes, mouth, anus, and 
genitalia. A cloth should be used for the body of the 
child, but pledgets of cotton for those parts furnishing 
secretions and excretions that should be removed forever. 



Care of Mouth 39 

Absorbent cotton should be used to cleanse the catar- 
rhal secretions from the nose of infants and children, in- 
stead of handkerchiefs; and all used cotton should be 
burned at once 

CARE OF THE MOUTH 

Should a child's mouth be washed? — If fed properly 
(three times a day from birth), there will be no sprue 
(thrush), 

Sprue is a whitish, thready, flake-like substance that 
gathers on the tongue, between the gums, and on the in- 
side of the cheeks, and, when bad, may be found covering 
all the inside of the mouth. 

Its cause is too frequent feeding by a mother who eats 
too much starchy food. It means an acid state, and 
should be overcome by the mother suspending the use of 
starch for a few days, and eating fresh, ripe fruit for 
breakfast, and no other food for that meal if the season is 
summer ; but, if it is winter, she should have raisins, dates, 
figs, and uncooked apples, and milk; at dinner, meat, 
cooked, non-starchy vegetables, and a large combination 
salad. By feeding the mother in this way, future baby 
trouble, such as diarrhea and other baby diseases, will be 
avoided. If the child is treated in the ordinary way, with 
borax and soda, the usual line of disease and palliation is 
started, and the child and mother are headed in the direc- 
tion of indigestion, mother's milk disagreeing, wet-nurses, 
artificial feeding, cow's milk, modifying powders and all 
kinds of baby patent foods, sickness galore, doctor's bills. 
and, alas ! too often death to the little loved one — and then 
the undertaker's bill to make further inroads on an al- 
ready depleted savings account. 

What makes baby sick?— Aside from carelessness in 
keeping baby warm, clean, and free from excitement, it 
must be what if eats, or what its mother eats, or has eaten 



40 Care of Children and Mothers 

during her gestation period. (See "Diseases of Women 
and Easy Childbirth.") 

When to prevent sickness in baby.— Begin as soon as 
conception takes place, and have the mother live for the 
future health and well-being of her child. This is the only 
eugenics that counts. Parental health is no insurance 
against the modifying influence of a haphazard and con- 
ventional style of living on embryonic development. 

Domestic harmony and obedience to health laws on the 
part of parents count for more in bringing healthy chil- 
dren into the world than ideal bodies for parents who fol- 
low after the customs of the day. Custom and convention 
are always headed toward degeneration — race degenera- 
tion. 

How to prevent skin cliafing. — The remedies usually 
prescribed for skin chafing, scalding about the buttocks, 
prickly heat, and all other skin diseases, are unnecessary. 
When children are properly cared for before and after 
birth, they will not have any disease of the skin or mucous 
membrane; hence such remedies as bran baths, dusting- 
powders, medicated or not, sea-salt baths, vinegar and 
water baths, starch and boric-acid powder, etc., are all 
superfluous. 

What is to be done ivith babies that have not been so 
fortunate as to be tcell born, and that are suffering with 
the disease for which these superfluous prescriptions are 
given? — Change the mother's style of eating, as suggested 
on a preceding page ; or have her eat fruit only for one or 
two days ; then take up that plan. Next, instead of feed- 
ing the baby every two or three hours, allow it to nurse 
three times a day, and give it water from a nursing-bottle 
as often as it will take it with a relish between feeds. 

No baths are necessary, except clean, soft water ap- 
plied with clean, soft cloths. 



Clothing 41 

Medication of all kinds is superfluous, and is made 
necessary only by our inherited love and reverence for the 
mysterious and our fetish-worship. This custom will 
curse humanity as long as it lasts; for it satisfies the 
superstition in the lay, and professional, mind, and bars 
the road to progress by preventing a proper search after 
cause 

CLOTHING 

Hoiv should a baby be clothed f — If in homes that are 
kept warm by steam, hot water, or heated air, and the 
heat is regulated in winter to about sixty-eight degrees 
Fahrenheit, children should be dressed in clothing suited 
for warm weather. The material should be linen, soft cot- 
ton, or silk. Wool is not a correct covering for the skin. 
If it is worn, cotton or linen should be worn between the 
skin and the woolen garment. 

Clothing and overheated houses build skin enervation ; 
and when the skin is enervated, it does not protect the 
body well. This is the condition of the skin when the 
catching-cold habit is developed. 

Children born in homes warmed by fireplaces or stoves 
will need more clothing. Use the same kind, but a heavier 
weight. Very healthy children have been brought up in 
such houses without shoes or stockings, and after they had 
attained three or four years of age they did not hesitate 
to play, more or less, in the snow. This tough stock — of 
which our forebears were a type — and the habits that 
inured them, are about extinct. From this high standard 
of physical efficiency the generations have slowly, but 
surely, declined. Shall we ever regain our former phys- 
ical efficiency? It is doubtful, unless every mother-to-be 
can be made to see, and become imbued with the idea of, 
the need of a change from our system of coddling and 
pampering children to one of tempering and hardening 
them. When mothers wake up to this need, they must 



42 Care op Children and Mothers 

learn, and then practice the hardening process on them- 
selves. They should begin before a family is in immediate 
prospect; if not then, surely as soon as the responsibility 
is known to be assumed. 

People know so little regarding health, and what is 
meant by hardiness as applied to children, that they can 
hardly be trusted with advice along the lines of child de- 
velopment. 

It is pathetic to see a tuberculous mother struggling 
in a hopeless endeavor to make her baby strong after it 
has once got a bad start. 

Such mothers will so frequently say: "Why cannot 
my baby be strong, like Mrs. So-and-So's? She feeds her 
baby anything, and neglects it; yet it thrives." 

There is a great gulf that physically divides Mrs. 
Robust from Mrs. Delicate, and neither of these women 
can understand why both children should not receive the 
same care. Mrs. Robust is quite sure that Mrs. Delicate's 
child would be big and strong if given the same care that 
she gives her child; but when the latter applies some of 
Mrs. Robust's hardening plans to her baby, she makes it 
sick, and possibly kills it. 

The public needs much education on this subject. 
Education on the germ theory will not help. Tuberculous 
subjects must understand that there is but one way to get 
rid of the disease and its strain in the family, and that is 
through physical and mental education that begins at the 
beginning of gestation, and runs through that and at" least 
the two following generations. Health is a matter of 
right thinking and right living practiced all the time — not 
spasmodically and occasionally. We must live right every 
day and every night. Health is not built by so-called im- 
munizing agents. 

A word of more direct caution: Mothers who know, 
or should know, that they are not strong, and that their 



Babies Should Be Warm 43 

children are not up to a high state of physical efficiency, 
should not entertain much thought of hardening their 
children. If the nude air bath is to be attempted, the 
room must be warm — warmer than for strong children; 
and the first four or five baths should be accompanied with 
open-hand rubbing. 

Young children must he kept warm. — All very young 
children must be kept warm. They must' not be allowed 
to chill at night; in fact, not at any time. Thousands of 
children are killed every year because they are allowed to 
chill. It is not enough to see that they are heavily bun- 
dled up. The mother or nurse must feel the extremities 
often ; and if the mother or attendant happens to have low 
vitality and cold hands, someone must be employed to care 
for the child who can judge of heat and cold. There must 
be no guessing; if any child thrives, it must he warm. To 
allow a sick child to chill daily or nightly will kill it. in 
spite of the most skilled care otherwise administered. 

A sick child has no power to warm its own body ; arti- 
ficial heat is necessary; and great skill is needed in the 
use of artificial heat, not to overheat. The good old way 
— the way nature intended, namely, cuddling baby in the 
arms of its mother, up snug against her body — insures 
against the chill of death, and also germinates a love that 
saves the child from the fires of hell after it is graduated 
from the mother's body. Mothers who refuse to cuddle 
their babies refuse to build love in their children. 

The hen that hatches the egg is the mother of the 
chicken. Not infrequently nurses get the love that natu- 
rally belongs to mothers. 

Clothing for the baby may be a linen shift, with cotton 
or linen abdominal support, and napkins. A woolen 
blanket should always be at hand to wrap around the feet 
and legs when necessary — when the room is colder than 
usual. The average child of today is enervated, and un- 



44 Care of Children and Mothers 

less parents have inured themselves previous to the child's 
birth, the child must of necessity inherit an enervated 
state, and will need more attention and artificial warmth 
than if the parents had built well before the child's con- 
ception. 

A baby's clothing should not be tight. — The band is 
largely superfluous ; too much is made of it, and it belongs 
to the superfluities of the universal doctoring, or sick, 
habit. No doubt the abdomen is weakened by its use ; and 
this weakening has much to do with the almost universal 
constipation existing among nursing children. 

NEED OF POISE 

Feeding, clothing, bathing, etc., are not the most nec- 
essary requirements for the comfort and health of a child. 
Mothers must be healthy in mind and body ; they must be 
happy, contented, and poised; not only at, and after, the 
birth of their children, but these must be habits formed 
long ahead of conception. The lack of self-control — lack 
of poise — in mothers results in restlessness, crying, indi- 
gestion, constipation, and a general, all-round unhappi- 
ness in the child. 

To secure a normal child, it is necessary for parents to 
be at least good animals. 

NAPKINS 

Keep babies clean.- — Change napkins as soon as wet. 
The child should be sponged, and all parts wet with dis- 
charges should be cleansed, every time there is a change 
of napkins. 

Excoriations, chafing, scalding, or any skin irritation 
caused by the urine or bowel discharges, can be cured 
by cleanliness. Indeed, a lack of cleanliness is the cause 
of these minor diseases. Using napkins after they have 
been wet with urine and dried is one cause of these skin 
derangements. 



Nursery 45 

Soiled napkins should be placed in water and not 
allowed to dry. They should be washed and boiled as soon 
after being soiled as possible. 

It is not necessary for a child to have any malodors. 
Perfume is absurd; it neither covers the odor coming 
from lack of cleanliness, nor causes the child to be clean. 
There is no odor so splendid as the real sweetness 
of cleanliness. Perfume, like the doctor's antiseptic, is 
made to hide, or antidote, filth. Neither is needed when 
proper cleanliness is maintained; and both should be 
recognized as advertising lack of cleanliness. Perfume 
is enervating ; hence it should not be used on babies. 

NURSERY 

Temperature of nursery or living-room,— The child 
should be kept in as even a temperature as possible. The 
temperature should not go above sixty-eight to seventy 
degrees Fahrenheit. If possible, the night temperature 
should not exceed ten degrees cooler. The thermometer 
should hang in the middle of the room, from a chandelier. 

Overheating and chilling. — Children are often covered 
too warmly. The room through the clay is allowed to be 
too warm. This heat, added to by overclothing or too 
much covering, relaxes and enervates the child. If, then, 
it is fed imprudently, all the elements of a catarrhal croup 
are brought together. Indeed, this is the way croup, 
tonsilitis, indigestion, and the catching-cold habit are 
built. Add improper drainage, an unsanitary home and 
neighborhood, and a depressing atmospheric state; then 
all the elements necessary for diphtheria, scarlet fever, 
measles, and other so-called contagious diseases are 
present. 

WEIGHT 

What should a child iveigh at birth? — When mothers 
are restricted in their eating, and given the proper amount 
of food to secure perfect health and easy childbirth, 



46 Care op Children and Mothers 

children should weigh from three to six pounds. The first 
week there should be no gain. The rule is that where 
mothers eat in a haphazard way, and children are born 
overweight, they lose from a half-pound to a pound the 
first week or ten days; but when they are born unin- 
cumbered, they do not lose, neither do they gain. The 
gain of such children for the first year is not so great as 
that of the overfed children of overfed mothers. The first 
six months they will gain from three to six pounds, and at 
the end of the first year these children are smaller than 
the average, but much healthier and more active. 

Changing to artificial food affects weight. — When a 
child must be changed to artificial feeding, it usually loses 
weight at first. Cow's milk cannot be digested well at 
first. Indeed, no food will agree; for the child has lost 
out on its mother's milk; hence, whatever food is given 
should be given in small enough quantities not to overtax 
an already deranged digestion. 

The estimate is made that a seven-and-one-half-pound 
baby should weigh twelve pounds at three months ; at six 
months, about fifteen pounds ; at one year, about twenty- 
one pounds. 

The increase in weight is not always steady. Children 
go up and down. Teething is often accompanied with 
more or less sickness, and during the sick spells weight is 
lost. Hot weather prevents increase in weight. 

INCUMBEEED CHILDEEN 

Fat babies are not normal. — Children that are too 
heavy often lose all their weight, and may remain too thin 
for years. Many die who are too heavy at birth. Fat 
babies are generally thought to be healthy, but too fre- 
quently they are dysemic— lacking in one or more elements 
necessary to the building and maintaining of full resist- 
ance. Of course, the cause is a defective food supply. 
When such children are subjected to the enervating in- 



Incumbered Children 47 

fluences of hot weather, and imprudent care or lack of 
care, they break down and suffer from some form of 
children's diseases. The error in feeding must be looked 
after carefully, and corrected ; else dependable health will 
not be secured. 

Sugar-eating by mother affects child. — Mothers often 
eat too much sweets. When sugar is used to excess, it 
disturbs the balance between protein and carbohydrates. 
The former is used up, while the latter fail to be appro- 
priated. When sugar is used to the extent of supplying 
nearly all the heat required, starch digestion is made diffi- 
cult. Indigestion follows. Acidosis, or reduced alkalinity 
of the blood, causes mother's milk to build fat babies — 
babies that are devoid of resistance — many of whom will 
teeth slowly and painfully. From this class death reaps 
a large harvest. 

The remedy is : Have mothers live simply, and avoid 
stimulants and over-excitement. Mothers must be well, if 
they would have ideal children. 

TALKING 

Some children are slow to talk, due to enervation from 
frequent feeding, overfeeding, and improper care gener- 
ally. An overfed child is always a sluggish, non-observ- 
ant child. Children are bright, alert, and attentive when 
not made dull and non-interesting by frequent feeding. 

Crowding nutrition causes the hunting-dog to lose the 
trail, the race-horse to lose the race, the business man. to 
fail, the schoolboy to lose his opportunity, and the baby to 
be slow to talk and slow to develop. Knowledge depends 
upon power of attention. From birth to the grave, what 
man knows is in keeping with his power of attention and 
observation. These faculties are more or less inhibited 
by crowding nutrition. Children who talk early — at nine 
months to a year of age — are small (under size) and very 
active. 



4:8 Care of Children and Mothers 

All children should talk at a year of age, and will un- 
less unnaturally weakened by sickness. 

If children show great delay in talking, and at two or 
three years of age are unable to do more than utter a few 
monosyllables, the cause may be infantile paralysis ; or an 
injury to the head may have occurred at or after birth. 
Undoubtedly a condition of paralysis of the speech center 
exists, even if the cause cannot be determined. 

WALKING 

Like talking, walking should take place early. Bright; 
active, light children w r alk at nine months of age. Slug- 
gards are made, not born. When a child is lazy, it is 
poisoned. It is well for parents to remember that, if they 
will eat beyond necessity, they make themselves dull and 
stupid; and this same state of nerves is imparted to the 
unborn child. Then, after it is born, if overfed, the poison 
of indigestion will prevent its nervous system from devel- 
oping rapidly; indeed, it may be made dull and sluggish 
for life. 

A properly developed child will be small, active, and 
possessed of great power of attention. Mental blindness 
always means a deadened power from the stupefying 
effects of crowded nutrition. 

Where walking is delayed until the child is from one 
and one-half to three years old, infantile paralysis has 
been overlooked. The disease is often sustained without 
much warning — little more than a slight fever and ir- 
ritability lasting a day or two. Paralysis roay be brought 
on in children of pronounced neurotic temperament, by 
overfatigue— for example, in allowing them to sit too long 
in a walking-training chair. A fall, or an injury at child- 
birth, may cause the child to lose the use of one or both 
limbs. The misfortune may result as a sequel to a severe 
sickness. 



Teething 49 

Too much cannot be said about the right of every child 
to be born well, physically and mentally. And this it will 
be when parents are intelligent enough to know their re- 
sponsibility in the premises — when people can digest the 
Bible text: "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of 
thistles?" 

TEETHING 

Teething. — A few children teeth early and a few teeth 
late. In the same family, children differ widely — one 
child cutting four teeth within the first four months, and 
another not having one at twelve months of age. 

Two central lower teeth may be looked for from about 
the fifth to the ninth month ; then four upper central teeth 
may appear from the eighth to the twelfth month. The 
other front teeth may come from the twelfth to the 
eighteenth month. 

The estimate is made that at one year a child has six 
teeth; at a year and a half, twelve teeth; at two years, 
sixteen teeth; and at two and one-half years, twenty teeth. 

The cause of variation in the time of teething. — The 
cause is either a defective supply of the elements in the 
food or a defective nutrition from enervation. 

Healthy children will have no trouble in teething. 

Indigestion is at the bottom of all sickness at teething 
time. 




Chapter II 
FEEDING 



THE FIEST YEAR 

OW long should a child nurse ? — A child 
should nurse the first year of life, unless the 
mother becomes pregnant before the year is 
out; then, of course, it should be weaned 
at once. 

Should a child be nursed at night? 
— Never! Nursing at night is a very bad 
habit. It teaches the child to be restless — it teaches a 
child to have broken sleep ; whereas, if a child is not fed 
at night from birth, it grows the habit of sleeping all night. 
Habits. — Eating, bathing, sun bath, air bath, exercise, 
and day, as well as night, sleeping, should be regular, if 
perfect health is to be hoped for. 

Drinking. — When the child is young it should be of- 
fered water several times a day, especially in hot weather. 
Many children are made sick by nursing the breast or bot- 
tle when they should have water. When a child is rest- 
less soon after nursing, or at any time between feeding 
times, water should be offered. Water in a nursing-bottle 
should be prepared at bedtime to give the baby through 
the night, if it should be restless or cry. No sugar is to 
be put into the water at any time. 

Drinking from a cup. — A child should not be taught to 
drink anything but water from a cup. Milk should not be 
drunk like water, and the first year the water should be 
given out of a bottle with the regulation nipple. Milk 
should be eaten with a spoon. Each spoonful can then be 



Exclusive Milk Diet 51 

mixed with saliva. In nursing, the motions of mouth and 
tongue excite mouth secretions, also stomach secretions, 
and this secures good digestion. When milk is drunk like 
water, indigestion follows; for this style of eating is in 
reality bolting food. 

It is well if a child will take milk from a bottle for the 
first two years ; for, in doing so, the nursing excites secre- 
tions, and digestion will be more perfect. There is not 
much danger of forming the "bottle habit?' However, it 
is well to stop the bottle feeding at the end of the second 
year. 

Anemia mid malnutrition do not follow the use of an 
exclusive milk diet. — Some authors teach that anemia and 
imperfect nutrition follow the exclusive use of milk for 
two or three years. Milk is an ideal food for the young, 
and it requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt to estab- 
lish a statement to the contrary. 

Of course, it must be assumed that the milk is pure 
and up to the standard in food elements ; otherwise chil- 
dren will not thrive. But if the milk is all right, and 
children do not thrive, bad habits should be looked for. It 
will be found that milk is given at any time, night and 
day, and the children are allowed to have their own sweet 
way— allowed to cry at any time and at all times: allowed 
to grouch as much as desired. 

Mind and body must he controlled, — Children need 
mental discipline as much as they need physical training. 

Can a baby take cote's milk without dilution? — Yes, if 
fed as directed. If necessary to wean the baby, begin 
early to give a little pure cow's milk at the end of each 
nursing. The custom is to give the milk much diluted. 
So we find that it is custom, and not experience, that 
guides. 

Artificial foods. — Children may appear to thrive, for 
a time, by being fed artificial foods; but a time comes 
when the amount of malnutrition generated bv them will 



52 Care of Children and Mothers 

be apparent. Artificial food for children is much on the 
order of chemically prepared food for grown people. Both 
kinds starve the body. 

Scurvy and rickets caused by the use of artificial foods. 
— Scurvy and rickets follow the use of artificially prepared 
foods. When a child is old enough to eat any and all 
foods, if its eating is restricted to staples and sweets, with 
little or no fresh fruits and vegetables, it will become 
dysemic and liable to take on scurvy or rickets. The 
foundation for such diseases is laid in embryo. When 
mothers are fed properly, there is no danger of the 
children developing such diseases ; for, if mothers eat right 
during the embryonic life of their children, they are 
liable to eat right at all times, and they will give their 
children the proper food. 

Selecting milk. — The milk from a properly inspected 
dairy is good enough. Milk from a cow or goat, properly 
fed, watered, and housed, is reliable as an infant food. 
Milk from a cow that is not looked after and cared for 
properly is not to be preferred to the milk from a herd of 
cows. 

Milk should be fresh from a cow or goat, in hot 
weather especially, if the child is delicate or has recently 
been sick. I mean that, if the child is fed three or four- 
times a day, it would be well to milk and give the milk 
warm from the cow. During cold weather the morning's 
milk is safe enough to give through the day. 

Milk must be kept in clean vessels and in a clean place. 
It should not be kept in a refrigerator where food is 
kept, unless all food is incased in air-tight vessels, and 
the vessels and refrigerator are kept scrupulously clean. 
Where there is no ice-box or refrigerator, milk may be kept 
in cold water, as follows : 

Construct a skeleton framework large enough to set 
over a pan containing water of sufficient depth to come 
up to the necks of the bottles. Tack canvas over the frame- 



Care op Milk 53 

work, and then arrange so that enough water will drop on 
the canvas to keep it wet. This is on the order of the 
Arizona cooler, and is a great advantage to those who can- 
not have ice. 

The evaporation, where the canvas is kept wet, keeps 
the water and milk cool. The water should be changed 
twice in twenty-four hours. 

When possible, keep milk at a temperature of about 
fifty degrees Fahrenheit. 

Certified milk. — 

This term is properly applied only to milk produced under 
sanitary conditions of exceptional excellence, by the most pains- 
taking methods, and under the constant supervision and inspec- 
tion of a Medical Milk Commission. — Sherman. 

Preparing milk for children.— The best manner of pre 
paring food for the child, according to the best medical 
authorities, is as follows: During the hot weather it is 
well to prepare all the food the child is to take during 
the day, in the morning, and keep it in a cooler, not on ice. 

Milk should be warmed at feeding time. — Warm the 
food to body heat at the time of feeding. Those who feed 
milk exclusively should put the milk in three different 
bottles, enough in each for a meal, so that, when one feed 
is given, the rest of the milk will not be disturbed. A few 
physicians do not believe in using starch, but they do 
believe in pasteurizing the milk ; hence they can pasteurize 
in three different bottles, keeping the different meals 
separate, so as not to disturb them until the child is ready 
to be fed. 

Specific gravity of milk. — The specific gravity of milk 
ranges from 1.029 to 1.035. This is as compared with 
water, which is given a specific gravity of 1.000. 

When milk is watered, its specific gravity is lowered. 

Should cow's milk be sweetened? — Sugar should not 
be added to milk if the child is not thriving. When well, 
about six grains to each ounce is enough. One grain of 



54 Care of Children and Mothers 

soda (baking-soda) to the ounce of milk overcomes, to a 
slight extent, the tendency of milk to ferment. 

CLEANLINESS IN CARE OF MILK 

Cleanliness is more important than pasteurizing or 
modifying milk, — It is impossible to be too cleanly about 
the care of children. Milk bottles must be thoroughly 
cleansed, and then boiled, and, if possible, placed in the 
sun for a day. 

Nursing-bottles. — There should be at least a half-dozen. 
As soon as a bottle has been used, it should be cleansed ; 
then — not an hour, nor a day, afterwards, but immediately 
— boiled and put out in the sun. For the next feeding 
take the bottle that has been longest out of use — provided, 
of course, that it has been properly taken care of. 

The rubber nipples must be thoroughly washed; and 
there should be as many nipples as bottles, or even more. 
As soon as a child has finished nursing, the nipple is to 
be washed as well as the bottle. It should be scrubbed 
with a brush and Castile soap (or any good toilet soap) ; 
then thoroughly rinsed, and put to soak in soda water (a 
tablespoonful of soda to the quart of water). Keep in a 
covered jar. Allow the nipples to stay in this soda-water 
until ready for use ; then rinse them off in quite hot water. 
It spoils the rubber to use boiling water. 

There is a great deal of straining at gnats and swallow* 
ing of camels in regard to milk, its modification, pasteur- 
ization, etc. If the hints I have given are carried out — 
namely, get milk from a proper ly-cared-f or animal (cow 
or goat) — and then, if the proper cleanliness, such as I 
have suggested, is practiced, and overfeeding is avoided, 
there will be no excuse for calling doctors, nor for giving 
paregoric, soothing syrup, pepsin, and other things belong- 
ing to medical superstition. Of the three virtues, charity 
is said to be the greatest; but, in regard to the care of 



Pasteurizing 55 

children, the avoiding of overfeeding is the greatest of all, 
and cleanliness comes next. 

Pasteurizing, — I am frequently asked what I think 
of the pasteurizing of milk. It belongs to the germ super- 
stition. There is nothing to it. The only thing in its 
favor is that the milk is not heated to a point that spoils 
it materially for use. It certainly does not sterilize. 
When milk is heated to 212 degrees, it is more or less 
spoiled as a food, and of what benefit can it possibly be? 
If the child has been fed too frequently, its mouth and 
stomach and bowels are in an acid state, and if sterilized 
milk is put into its stomach, it soon becomes infected 
with the other decomposing milk. Instead of feeding the 
child sterilized milk under such circumstances, give it 
sterilized water, or plain water, until the stomach and 
bowels are thoroughly cleared out and rid of the ferment 
that has been brought on from overeating. Then feed milk 
that comes fresh from the animal; but be sure that it is 
taken in small enough quantities not to oxertax a 
weakened digestion. When children are fed beyond their 
digestive capacity, their stomachs and bowels are con- 
verted into veritable swill-barrels. It would be a joke, 
were it not so serious, to talk about feeding such children 
sterilized or pasteurized milk, or feeding them peptonized 
or modified milk, with a view of keeping the digestive 
organs sweet and clean, aseptic, and nourishing their 
bodies. 

What advantage is there in peptonizing? — It enables 
the doctor and the nurse to feed a little more. Years ago 
I found that children could take more milk for a while by 
helping them digest what they took with pepsin. Pepsin, 
and bicarbonate of soda, or lime-water, will overcome the 
little acidity for the time being. And what does this 
mean ? It means that the symptoms produced by feeding 
too much are palliated for the time being. What becomes 
of the patient, if this nonsensical treatment is continued? 



56 Care op Children and Mothers 

It is only a question of time when the child will go down 
and out with some form of disease. 

This is true of grown people as well as of children. 
Years ago it was the writer's privilege to be the physician 
to a very large clientele of farmers. They worked hard, 
and ate harder. They were subject to frequent sick spells, 
which were invariably due to indigestion. I would give 
them good, big doses of pepsin and soda, which would act 
like a charm. They would soon be relieved; the pepsin 
would digest the undigested material that was giving them 
trouble in the stomach and bowels; and in a few days 
after taking this artificial digestive agent the patients 
would be able to go back to work in the field — and at 
the table. What became of them ? Most of them died at 
from thirty to forty-five years of age. Acute diseases of 
some type carried them off ; they were probably killed by 
treatment. 

I would suggest, as a parting word on this subject: 
Avoid feeding beyond the digestive capacity. There is 
no advantage in overfeeding by the aid of pepsin. Some 
authors say that "peptonized milk is useful with young 
infants who have great difficulty in digesting the curd of 
the milk." Why do they have great difficulty in digesting 
the curd of the milk? Simply because they have too much 
milk given them. If a man should eat too much beefsteak, 
it might be said that he has great difficulty in taking care 
of beefsteak; but if only a quantity that is within his 
digestive capacity be given him, he immediately gets over 
his inability to digest the beefsteak. This can be applied 
all along the line, as regards eating and digesting. When 
there is no desire for food, rest to the digestive function 
should be given ; it is a mistake to force an appetite. 

Years ago, tonics were given to force digestion. Much 
nervous derangement has been built in an endeavor to 
build a good appetite and good digestion. All that is ever 
necessary under such circumstances is to withdraw food 



Modified Milk 57 

a sufficient length of time, and then begin to feed little 
enough, and gradually increase. Doctors who overfeed, 
and patients who are overfed, are always complaining of a 
lack of desire for food, and of failure in their power to 
digest. There is neither sense nor reason in any of this 
scientific nonsense. All that is necessary for any person 
to do is to imitate the animal. When an animal does 
not have a desire for food, it will not eat; but when the 
human animal gets to the point where it does not have a 
desire, then the scientific doctor is employed to drum up 
an artificial desire; and when it is found that the food 
taken cannot be digested, artificial digestants are used. 
And this nonsense is called modern medical science! 

Is it necessary to modify milk? — When a child cannot 
be nursed, and it is positively necessary to give cow's 
milk, the child's digestion may gradually be educated up 
to whole milk. It may be necessary to modify the milk, 
which means to change the composition of the milk to 
resemble mother's milk. The modified milk does not repre- 
sent human milk ; it is simply an attempt to make mother's 
milk. But it is a failure. It is neither cow's milk nor 
human milk, and the sooner it can be dispensed with, 
after it has been selected as a food, the better. 

Drug stores carry modifying powders, with accom- 
panying instructions. 

What is top milk? — The milk that comes to the top 
within about four hours after standing. Top milk means 
the upper third of common milk, or the upper two-thirds 
of rich milk. 

Should top milk he fed to babies?— The whole milk is 
better. If milk is known to be thin, or devoid of cream, 
a little may be added— enough to make the milk of average 
composition. 

Strength of cream.— -Ordinary skimmed cream con- 
tains about sixteen to eighteen per cent fat or butter; 
the separated cream — the centrifugal cream — contains 



58 Care of Children and Mothers 

from eighteen to twenty per cent fat. The heaviest cream 
secured by separation has from thirty-five to forty per 
cent fat. 

Which is more digestible — milk or cream? — Milk. Man 
cannot improve on the composition of milk. Adding milk 
sugar, or using top milk, or adding cream to milk, is in 
no wise improving the digestibility nor the ordinary com- 
position of milk as a food. Cream is not a perfect food 
for infants or adults. It should be known that when 
mothers are dysemic (blood not possessed of all the min- 
eral elements — a deficiency of one or more of the elements 
of the blood) or pyemic (pus in the blood), children can- 
not thrive on the milk of such mothers, and the sooner 
they are taken from the breast, the better. 

Milk is best given tohile warm with animal heat.— Milk 
should be used as soon as possible after it is taken from 
the animal. Indeed, if it is possible to have the child take 
the milk while it is still warm with animal heat, it should 
be done; for then it is more easily digested. Milk, like 
blood, is an organ, and after it is removed from its habitat 
it changes very rapidly. As soon as it is cold — as soon as 
the animal heat is gone— some important constituent is 
lost, and its composition as a food ceases to be ideal — 
perfect. This slight change in the composition of milk 
may not be detected by analysis, and it may not work 
perceptible change in the digestion of children over two 
years of age ; but in children under two years of age, and 
especially in very young children, the influence can be 
noticed — not, however, until the observer is thoroughly 
and delicately trained in his observing faculties. 

When it is practicable to milk a cow or a goat in a 
previously warmed vessel, and feed the milk to the child 
immediately, the very best results may be expected. If a 
perfect nipple is ever invented through which a child may 
take milk warm from the animal, ideal results may be 
attained in the artificial feeding of children. 



Modified Milk 59 

When to reduce milk. — When a child is less than a 
month old, and the cow from which the milk is taken to 
feed it has been giving milk for some time, say six months, 
the milk should be reduced with from one-fourth to one- 
third water. 

It has never been my habit to dilute milk. The feeding 
should be done through rubber nipples with small open- 
ings, forcing the child to labor with mouth and tongue to 
draw the milk from the bottle. This labor forces a heavy 
secretion of saliva and other mouth secretions which are 
necessary to perfect digestion. With nursing, the same as 
with feeding, thorough insalivation is necessary. The 
children of mothers whose breasts are easily drawn are 
disposed to eructate more or less of the milk they nurse. 
They are called "spitting babies," and are more inclined 
to be sick — have sick spells — than children who are 
obliged to labor with tongue and mouth to draw the food 
from their mothers' breasts. The latter are satisfied with 
less food, which is the normal result of slow or deliberate 
eating. 

Modifying milk. — -Milk sugar, one ounce; lime-water, 
one ounce; milk, from two to ten ounces; boiling water, 
from seventeen to nine ounces; varying an ounce more 
milk and an ounce less water, in proportions that end in 
twenty-one ounces of the mixtures. 

The approximate composition of these nine formulas, 
starting with the first, gives 0.70 fat, 5.50 sugar, and 0.35 
proteids. To find the composition of the other eight 
formulas, add to each succeeding formula 0.35 fat, 0.20 
sugar, and 0.18 proteids. For example, the first formula : 
milk, 2 ounces; milk sugar, 1 ounce; lime-water, 1 ounce; 
boiled water, 17 ounces ; composition : 0.70 fat, 5.50 sugar, 
0.35 proteids. The last, or strongest, formula: milk, 10 
ounces; milk sugar, 1 ounce; lime-water, 1 ounce; boiled 
water, 9 ounces; composition: 3.50 fat, 7.00 sugar, 1.75 
proteids. 



60 Care op Children and Mothers 

The plan of feeding is about as follows : The adminis- 
tration of the first formula is begun on the second day; 
the second, on the fourth day; the third, on the tenth to 
the fourteenth day; after this make the increase in 
strength of the formula more slowly. 

Amount of feeds. — Ordinarily, children may be fed 
cow's milk, diluted one-third, up to the end of the second 
month; from the third to the fourth month, dilute one- 
fourth ; after the end of fourth, full strength. The amount 
must vary to suit the apparent needs of the baby ; for no 
two are exactly alike in their requirements. Three to six 
ounces may be given until the end of the first month; 
from the second to the fourth month, six to twelve ounces ; 
from the fourth to the ninth month, twelve to twenty 
ounces; from the ninth to the twelfth month, twenty to 
thirty ounces. 

How often should a child he fed? — Authorities differ. 
Authors of text-books, and physicians, quite generally 
say: Feed every two hours up to the end of the second 
month; then every three hours to the end of the ninth 
month; then every four hours. Children should be fed 
morning, noon, and night, and not at all through the 
night. A bottle of water should always be at hand, to give 
when the child will take it. 

Why children are horn with gluttonous appetites. — If 
mothers have gone through pregnancy as they should, 
and kept their weight from going more than five pounds 
above normal (standard weight being one and one-half to 
two pounds to each inch of stature), children will not be 
born incumbered and with gluttonous appetites. Their 
weight at birth will range from three to six pounds ; they 
will be lighter than average children born under the 
present haphazard custom, and they will be more active 
throughout their first and second years; they will teeth, 
walk, and talk earlier than the average child, and they 
will not be subject to the so-called children's diseases. 



HUNGER 61 

A child never overfed will never be sick. No, properly- 
cared-for children will not take the so-called contagious 
diseases! 

The two- and three-hour feeding intervals are the direct 
cause of overfeeding, and become the exciting cause of all 
the ills to which children are subject under haphazard, 
or frequent-feeding, methods. 

Children are expected to he sick.— Everybody, includ- 
ing doctors, expects children to be sick. If they are not, 
it is so unusual that it excites comment. This is due to 
ignorance regarding the cause of children's diseases. 
Children should not be sick, and will not be if properly 
cared for. They will not be sick unless stuffed beyond 
their digestive and assimilative capacity, or unless their 
food has not been properly cared for. Children's diseases, 
including the exanthemata, or eruptive fevers, are caused 
by interrupted elimination from overeating. 

Hunger is necessary.— & child needs to feel the sensa- 
tion of hunger ; for it is a cosmic urge. The cosmic urge 
is seen, and understood by naturalists, in birds when the 
first warm days of springtime come: the feathered tribe 
begins to show symptoms of mating and nest-building. 
Reproduction is the urge, and it is a cosmic energy. The 
bodies of these birds begin to build eggs as soon as weather 
conditions favor. If a nest with eggs is destroyed, the 
urge for reproduction directs the energies of the bird into 
building a new nest and evolving more eggs. Neither of 
which would have taken place if the nest had not been 
destroyed; for the energy would have been expended in 
sitting, hatching, and caring for the baby birds. 

Restlessness of a baby— crying and kicking— is neces 
sary for development. If it is possible to feed the nervous 
system of a child in such a way that it will have no incen- 
tive to move, it fails to develop, and becomes a physical 
and mental idiot. What is idiocy? Non-development 
The child becomes physically and mentally educated by 



62 Care of Children and Mothers 

action; and unless it has impulses that stimulate move- 
ment, such as the natural functions of the body — hunger, 
and the physiological stimulation caused by the desire 
for bladder and bowel evacuation — no movements will be 
stimulated, and, as a result, the child fails to become 
educated — acquainted with its environment. Hunger is 
man's first and last teacher. At first, desire for food is 
the stimulation of activity, and unless there is a desire — 
if want is anticipated by caretakers, and supplied so that 
the incentive to move and cry is prevented — intelligence 
fails to develop and the child becomes an idiot. Hunger 
for food is our first schoolmaster. It forces a move on us, 
and we become acquainted with our extremities. It is by 
bumps and injuries that we are introduced to objects 
about us; and it is hunger that forces these movements. 
Soon we learn that there is pleasure in action — in move* 
ments ; then it is our hunger for pleasure that stimulates 
a desire for play. And so we move on and on, building 
new desires just for the pleasure of gratifying them. 

All education is built by our endeavors to gratify 
wants, desires, etc. The more wants we have, and the 
more they are reasonably supplied, the more wants we 
build. 

It is a very great mistake to supply the human animal 
with all its wants, thereby removing the incentive to 
effort; for education lies in the wake of want and the 
effort to supply it. Nothing of value is ever possessed 
that has not cost an effort. It is impossible to get some- 
thing for nothing. If we have food supply without effort, 
it becomes our undoing; for we must earn the power to 
digest it by the effort necessary to provide it. Parents 
who kindly, but unwisely, supply all the wants of their 
children deprive them of the practical education they need 
in securing what they want by self-effort. 

Babies should not be nursed oftener than three times 
a day. They should not be disturbed for the purpose of 



Sugar and Starch 63 

feeding even that often. When babies are quiet and sleep- 
ing, they should not be awakened for feeding. Later — 
when older — they will be awake more, and they may cry 
more ; but what of it ? They need to cry ; they need to be 
left alone, as I said before, to become acquainted with 
themselves. Crying, and fighting with legs and arms, is 
exercise for them ; they need it for health and education. 
The struggle for existence is necessary, and is worth all 
it costs. Feed children, from birth, three times a day ; and 
do not endeavor to quiet them, unless their irritations are 
caused by wet, uncomfortable clothing. (Frequent urina- 
tion is caused by overfeeding.) Give them an opportunity 
to grow, by allowing them to develop a hunger that is 
educational. 

Sugar is needed. — It is better, however, when children 
are old enough to be given sweet fruits, to give raisins, 
dates, and figs. Such food is much better than crowding 
their digestion with all sorts of starchy food and sugar. 

Starch-feeding. — It is a mistake to feed starchy foods 
too soon — before the end of the second year; for young 
children cannot take care of much starch. After the 
second year, thoroughly toasted bread may be given ; but 
the child must learn to chew it. Such food is not to be 
softened, and all fluids must be avoided until through 
eating. If chewing cannot be taught, then feed thoroughly 
cooked cereals — no sugar. 

What is better is to mash uncooked raisins, dates, or 
figs, mix with milk, and give all the sweet the child 
desires in this way. It may be necessary to soak the sweet 
fruit in hot water. 

In the berry season, select ripe, fresh berries, and 
mash them with the sweet fruits named, instead of using 
sugar. 

After two years of age, one meal a day may be of 
sweet fruits and milk. 



64 Care of Children and Mothers 

Before two years of age, the child should be fed cow's 
milk three times a day. At one of the meals it should be 
given an ounce of the sweet fruits, rubbed through a fine 
sieve or cheese-cloth, and mixed with an ounce of milk; 
followed with what milk the child desires. 

What harm comes to babies when mothers overeat? — 
The child is usually born incumbered (overweight), and 
it has a nervous system that craves stimulation. It 
inherits a nervous system that is easily taught gluttony — 
it "falls" for stimulants very readily. The children so 
cursed may become prejudiced to parents' vices and 
develop an enervating fanaticism that satisfies the morbid 
inheritance. Fortunate indeed is the child, born with the 
curse of sensuality stamped upon its nervous system, that 
is taught early in life how to avoid — how to rise above — 
its inherited tendencies. This is the duty that is now 
demanding the attention of this, and coming, generations. 
Such babies make a great fuss for food ; they cry a great 
deal ; and when their desire for food is supplied, or when 
they are fed according to their demands, they become 
more restless and harder to please. They are not satisfied 
with feeding short of an amount that makes them uncom- 
fortable. 

Mothers should eat moderately. — It is necessary for 
mothers to control themselves in every way; and fathers 
should help the mothers of their children by practicing 
self-control. Too often the mother has the only self-con- 
trol in the family. Too often mothers have to furnish 
about all the virtue and self-control there are to transmit 
to children. Mothers must control their eating and keep 
their weight down. The self-control required for this 
imparts a poised state of the nervous system to the 
unborn child. Children so blessed before birth can be 
brought up more ideally — they are more easily controlled. 

The eugenic child. — The present popular idea of the 
eugenic child is that it must be born of parents who have 



Want 65 

attained a physical standard that is ideal in size and for- 
mation — accidental developments of our present hap- 
hazard system. The ideal physical developments, under 
our present system, are possessed of our system's imper- 
fections in potentiality, and it is the potential that governs 
and stamps its wants' upon the progeny. The ideal 
physiques of our system are accidents, rather than the 
consummation of developmental wants ; hence the marriage 
of an ideal couple, products of our present haphazard 
system of low ideals — if, indeed, there are any ideals at 
all — has no ideals to transmit; and, as their physical 
organsisms have satisfied the accidental impulses that 
brought them to their perfection, they have nothing to 
project— transmit — and their children may, and are more 
liable than otherwise to, inherit the imperfections of their 
potentiality — their race inheritance. 

Want is the potential energy "par excellence" — 
Children have their physical and mental wants trans- 
mitted to them. A desire for freedom must become a 
people's desire; then it becomes a potential energy that 
may be transmitted to children. Gluttonous and sensual 
people transmit their unnatural appetites. 

Desirable transmission. — For children to inherit well, 
the desirable must be practiced for generations, until the 
virtue of self-control has become ingrained— has become a 
racial, or people's potential, energy. 

THE ADVANTAGE OF WANT 

I am told that the Jewish children of New York City 
average higher in their class work than those of any other 
race — than the children of our own country. Why? Be- 
cause of an inborn want: want that has been generated 
by centuries of deprivation and abuse; want for freedom 
to live as other people live. Want for everything of a 
social nature has become as potential in the Jewish race 
as the racial blood itself. Such a driving want, coupled 



66 Care op Children and Mothers 

with the potentials of loyalty and virtue of the Jewish 
maidens, wives, and mothers, which have been char- 
acteristic since tribal life, will eventuate in the Jew 
becoming the "white man's hope" — the savior of the white 
race. 

The Jew has been, and is, abused ; and our sympathies 
go out to him when we hear of the cruelties to which he 
has been subjected. The philosopher must see in this 
abuse a racial "blessing in disguise," in keeping with 
world-building. He must see a working-out of cosmic 
destiny that will end — by the Eternal, in spite of every 
opposition — in the Jew becoming the savior of the world. 
Individuals must suffer; but if they suffer and die for a 
cause so great as the emancipation of their race, and 
then their race become emancipators of all peoples from 
race-prejudice, their suffering and death will not have 
been in vain, and will win for them distinction's badge of 
honor and loyalty. World-processes are carried on with 
peoples, not with individuals. The individual good is of 
minor concern, compared with the advancement of races, 
peoples, and countries. 

If the bitter cup of want and suffering could be 
diverted, how could the virtues that are brought in no 
other way become potential in a race? No! The Jews — 
this scattered race — will be united; not in Palestine, not 
in any restricted country, but by links of saved peoples. 
The Jew is cosmopolitan, and he must suffer, and continue 
to suffer, until fitted by suffering to emancipate himself 
and the world from the curse of race-prejudice and re- 
ligious superstition. While the Jew has fought against 
amalgamation, he is destined to be the universal amalga- 
mator. How soon this will come depends entirely upon 
how soon the Jewish people awaken to a realization of the 
great responsibility resting upon them. The Jewish race 
is essentially religious, but it has not worked out a 



Advantage of Want 67 

universal religion. This will come when universal amal- 
gamation makes all peoples one. 

If the above bit of philosophical prophecy serves its 
purpose — if it enables my readers to find themselves on 
the subject of eugenics; enables even a few to understand 
that want, suffering, and even death are body- and mind- 
building; such race-building as stamps character in the 
blood and makes it potential, not only in the individual, 
but in the race — then I shall be satisfied. 

Eugenics, according to present-day ideals, is a pamper- 
ing process and will produce an impotent race; for 
degeneration follows in the wake of pampered appetites 
and anticipated wants. Life always comes out of death. 
Death follows on the heels of creation, as night follows 
day. Real life is bought with self-effort, and work — work 
— eternal work. A people supplied with every want 
deteriorates. A child that knows no hunger — has no real 
wants — is already on the road to degeneracy. Babies that 
score all points in "baby shows'' often die a few weeks or 
months after. What we do not know about eugenics 
would make a large book. 

Why can America assimilate the so-called scum of 
Europe? America has not done much except furnish 
opportunity. When these unfortunate people come to this 
country, they are potentized with want ; and the greatest 
is a want of opportunity. This America has given. But, 
like an unwise and indulgent parent, she has not looked 
after her charges as she should, and her adopted children 
are suffering from unwise indulgence ; and prematurity — 
senility — is setting in, which, if not controlled, will lead to 
early national death. There is but one worse suffering 
than want, and that is oversupply. One leads to regenera- 
tion, the other to degeneration. 

Children must be cared for in such a way as to develop 
the most health; and wholesome wants are not to be 
despised. Hunger must not be tabooed, if health is 



68 Care of Children and Mothers 

craved. If education is to be worth anything, it must be 
secured at the price of a need and want that drives to 
action. The present system of education is a stuffing 
process; and those stuffed regurgitate their half-digested 
mental pabulum on a credulous public unable to discrim- 
inate between real digested knowledge and the dyspeptic 
variety. 

I certainly hope that my readers will not be too impa- 
tient at my occasional excursions — digressions — out into 
people, race, and world subjects, for material to illustrate 
the great truth that laws governing individuals are the 
same as those governing peoples, races, and worlds, in 
their birth, life, and death. 

Parents, and others who have the care of children, 
should learn, for the good of all concerned, that want must 
be great enough to force action ; for through action come 
knowledge, experience, and lastly wisdom. It is well to 
remember that simply knowing will not do — we must 
experience. By practicing what we are taught by books 
and observation, the knowledge thus gained becomes ours, 
and not before. Theory gives a working basis ; but until 
theory is worked out — proved in our own lives — it is 
not our knowledge. 

How is a mother to know when a child is thriving? — 
A pampered and spoiled child is a problem for mothers; 
for it is hard to tell whether it is simply active, or in need 
of food or water, or uncomfortable. Mothers pay, and 
pay dearly, for overindulging their children; it makes 
bad actors of them. 

If a child has no fever, and the bowels are apparently 
normal, the kidneys sufficiently active, the skin-coloring 
all right, and the sleep quiet and natural, the mother 
need not pay much attention to its crankiness or ugliness. 
A spoiled child is a tyrant, and rules to ruin. 

To cure spoiled children, — Treat them with indif- 
ference. Place them where they cannot possibly hurt 



Crying 69 

themselves, and then allow them to become acquainted 
with themselves by "raising Cain." An hour or two spent 
in crying and spilling a lot of bad temper is splendidly 
educational, both physically and mentally; and where this 
remedy is used, in place of doctors and their dope, or 
soothing-syrup, children thiive and grow into good sons 
and daughters, and, neither last nor least, into good 
citizens. 

Is there danger in much crying? Is a child liable to 
bring on rupture? — Crying is a form of exercise. At 
birth, and soon after, it is the only exercise a baby can 
take. There is no danger in allowing a child to cry until 
it goes to sleep. To cry hard brings tire, and tire brings 
sleep. 

The only possible chance for rupture is to overfeed 
the child, and bring on fermentation and distention of 
the bowels with gas. Then the intra-abdominal pressure, 
aided by much crying or straining at stool, may cause 
rupture. Fast the child for a day or two, and then feed 
three times a day, giving half as much food as has been 
the custom, until cured of the gas distention. To cure 
hernia, a truss may be necessary when the child cries 
nearly all the time. If the hernia is large and inclined 
to stay out, have a truss worn daily — but have it taken 
off at night. 

OVERFEEDING 

An overfed child. — An overfed child, like inebriates 
and gluttons, has a constant desire for food. Its desire 
cannot be satisfied. Sufficient food should be given, but it 
is a great mistake to try to satisfy an abnormal desire. 
Many children are killed in this way every year. 

How can a mother know the difference between an 
overfed child, a sick child, and a spoiled child? — An over- 
fed child is a sick child, and often a spoiled child. An 
overfed child has curd in the bowel movements; it either 
is constipated or has diarrhea; its bowels are more or less 



70 Care op Children and Mothers 

distended with gas; it is uncomfortable, and often cross 
and irritable. A spoiled child will make as much trouble 
for nurse or mother as a sick child; but it has no symp- 
toms of sickness. 

How should an overfed child be cared for? — Fast it as 
long as necessary to remove the gas from its bowels, to 
get rid of the white milk-curds (undigested milk), and 
to overcome diarrhea, should diarrhea be one of the 
symptoms. If constipation is one of the symptoms, the 
bowels should be washed out thoroughly every day until 
all curdled milk — all accumulation — is washed away; 
then give half as much food as was given before the child 
was made sick. 

What should he done for vomiting? — Stop feeding and 
giving water. Children are thirsty when there is much 
irritation in the stomach, and often vomiting will continue 
until the stomach is rested from food and water. To 
relieve thirst, give a half-pint of plain water by enema 
every three hours until vomiting is controlled; then give 
boiled water by mouth for twenty-four hours before start- 
ing to feed. 

How should a child during the first year he fed after 
an attack of stomach irritation is overcome? — A child 
less than six months old should be fed about one-fourth 
the amount that it has been in the habit of taking before 
the attack of sickness, and of the same food that it has 
been accustomed to. A child of eight months to two years 
of age, if the weather is hot, should be given nothing but 
water the first day. Fruit juice should be given the second 
day. The third day it should be given milk — about one- 
third of its accustomed supply — in the morning; fruit 
juice at noon ; and, in the evening, if all goes well, about 
half the usual supply of milk taken before the sickness. 
By the third day it should be able to take its accustomed 
food, in about half the quantity, and at the same intervals 
that it has been accustomed to taking food. Then increase 



Weaning 71 

each day. But, as the child has been overfed, it would be 
well not to allow it to have so much as it was taking before 
its sickness. If, however, the sickness was brought on 
from imprudence — feeding articles of food that should not 
go into any child's stomach — perhaps all that will be 
necessary will be to give it the accustomed amount of 
milk, and leave the improper feeding alone entirely. 

Mothers should be careful about trifling with their 
children's stomachs in hot weather. Give the food to 
which the child is accustomed, and do not change or try 
experiments until the fall weather makes it safe. Nearly 
all children that are taken down and die with cholera 
infantum are forced into their sickness by mothers or 
nurses who believe that it is necessary to give babies a 
variety of foods. It is well to remember that milk carries 
all the nourishment necessary. All the constituents of 
the body may be found in pure milk; hence it is not 
necessary to take any risk in hot weather by attempting 
to feed the child outside of its customary milk supply. 

WEANING 

Weaning the lahy. — Children should be weaned at the 
end of the first year. Mothers should begin to give a little 
cow's milk a month or two before they intend to take the 
child off the breast. After letting the child nurse, give 
it a small amount of cow's milk through a nursing-bottle. 
This teaches the child to use the bottle, if it has not 
already been taught how to use it for drinking water. All 
babies raised properly should have a bottle of water given 
to them, or offered to them, every day. Children are often 
thirsty, and when being fed in the usual haphazard way 
they will be nursed instead of being given a drink. This 
lays the foundation for sickness. 

If the child is born in June, it should be weaned in 
April. Such children should be given a little cow's milk 
in February, along with the mother's nursing; gradually 



72 Care of Children and Mothers 

increasing the cow's milk and reducing the amount that 
is taken from the mother's breast. In this way the child 
can be weaned without any digestive disturbance. It is, 
however, well to bear in mind that the disturbances which 
come to children when their food is changed are due to 
overfeeding more than to the change. If the people and 
the profession could once get this idea well in mind, it 
would save a world of trouble in the care of children. 
The way that some children are abused by changing from 
one kind of food to another, almost daily, at a fatal time — ■ 
namely, when they are getting their second teeth, and in 
hot weather — is appalling, and wholly unnecessary; for 
the reason that all the different foods disagree is because 
of overfeeding and feeding when sick. 

If the end of the child's first year comes between June 
and the first of September, the weaning should not begin 
until September. About the ninth month, cooked or raw 
fruit may be given — a very little at the start ; and if the 
child makes faces, as though the taste were not agreeable, 
wait. It is not necessary for a healthy child to be fed 
anything but milk the first year. 

At the ninth month the child may be given a hard 
whole-wheat biscuit or cracker on which to cut its teeth. 
It will learn to eat by biting on the bread. The only other 
food to be given should be milk for the three meals. 

Much unnecessary sickness and many deaths among 
children during the hot weather could be avoided if all 
mothers would adopt my golden rule ; namely : Never give 
food when children are uncomfortable; and if a child is 
not comfortable from one meal time to the next, then the 
meal that is due must be omitted. The question of over- 
feeding, and of different foods disagreeing, would be 
settled if that golden rule were adopted in the household — 
not only for the baby, but for every member of the family. 

Such feeding as is indicated by the following clipping, 
tvhich was sent to me by a friend in Cambridge, Massachu- 



Weaning 73 

setts, cannot be passed upon as anything but manslaughter 
in the first degree. The friend who sent the clipping did 
not tell me who the author was; hence I cannot be very 
personal in my comments. I shall say, however, that it 
is in line with the feeding advocated by the physician who 
is educated into modern medical science. Look at the 
dinner advocated for this ten- or twelve-month-old child: 
chopped meat, meat broth, eggs, potato, gravy! Gravy, 
and for a baby! Grease and starch in combination, 
crackers, zwieback, etc. ! Doctors who recommend such 
eating may have raised pigs, but they have not raised 
children; or, if they have raised children, they have raised 
chronic invalids. Doctors who advocate feeding babies 
in that way will find it necessary to operate upon their 
children, when they are just entering manhood and 
womanhood, for appendicitis, ovaritis, or draining the 
gall-bladder, etc. But, from their point of view, the feed- 
ing has nothing to do with it; hence they will go on 
advocating the murderous plan of feeding children.. 

WEANING BABY 
Mrs. M. writes: "Will you kindly advise me through your 
'How to Keep Well' column what I should feed my ten-month-old 
baby when I wean him? He weighs nineteen pounds and has no 
teeth yet, I feed him orange juice in morning and blood of beef 
four times a week; also nurse him every three hours. Do you 
think this the proper time to wean him?" 

REPLY 

Wean him in April. He will then be between eleven and 
twelve months old. Feed him as follows: 
7 : 00 a. m. — Six ounces of milk and two ounces of oatmeal gruel. 
9:00 a. m.— Orange juice, strained. 
10:00 a.m. — Twelve ounces of a mixture of milk, two parts; oat- 
meal gruel, one part. 
2:00 p.m. — A little finely chopped meat, meat broth or eggs, 
potato and gravy, finely chopped spinach and carrots, 
crackers or zwieback, four ounces milk. 
6 : 00 p. m. — Twelve ounces milk, two parts ; gruel, one part. 
10:00 p.m. — Six ounces milk and two ounces gruel. 



Chapter III 



FEEDING 




SECOND TO FIFTH YEAR 

THE SECOND YEAR 

^^, OR the first six months of the second year, 
{ , / ^r ^ y cow's or goat's milk should be given — all the 
child will take. If the child has been nursed 
three times a day only from birth, it will 
not have an abnormal desire for food, and it 
can be trusted to take all it wants. 

Give the child all the milk it will take 
three times a day ; at noon, in addition to milk, give fruit 
or vegetables. Eun these foods through a vegetable mill, 
and grind into a pulp. If necessary, rub through a coarse 
sieve. Select sweet or moderately sour fruits — peaches, 
apples, pears, blackberries ; spinach, lettuce, celery. 

Prepare spinach and berries, or any other fruit that 
is not very acid. An orange, if sweet, is very nice to use 
with the vegetables, as follows: two tablespoonfuls of 
spinach and celery in pulp, with the juice of a sweet 
orange, or a like amount of pears, apples, or berries. 
Feed the child all it will take; then follow with as much 
whole milk as it will take. If the fruit is as sweet as it 
should be, no sugar is necessary. Children like a reason- 
able amount of acid. They have such a desire for fruit 
that, if they cannot get it ripe, they will eat green or 
immature fruit with a relish. This is referred to by 
laymen, and too often by medical men, as a morbid 
appetite. Eating chalk, pencils, dirt, plaster, wood, and 
other substances that are in no sense of the word food, 
comes from a badly balanced bill-of-fare. A proper 



Second Year 75 

amount of fruit and vegetables with the regulation diet 
will prevent such morbid desires, and will also prevent 
the developing of parasites in the alimentary canal. The 
greatest influence of a properly balanced diet is that it 
does not stop at preventing a morbid appetite and the 
developing of parasites, but it causes the child to be 
immune from the so-called contagions. I do not believe 
in contagion, but I use that term so as to make myself 
understood by the people as well as the profession. 

During the last six months of the second year a heap- 
ing teaspoonful each of ground, toasted bread and pecans, 
or English walnuts, may be added to a salad — lettuce, 
tomato, cucumber, and a small bit of onion — at noon, 
followed with milk. If the child enjoys fruit more than 
vegetable salad, leave out the bread, using the nuts and 
fruit ; follow with all the milk desired. The evening meal 
may be the same as the breakfast — simply milk. 

During the summer time, if desired, corn may be used. 
Cut it off the cob, mash thoroughly, and rub it through a 
coarse sieve. It may then be cooked in a double boiler, or 
mixed with the combination salad. 

How often is a child to be fed during the second year? 
— If the child has been fed four times a day up to the 
second year, it should have one meal taken from it; for 
three feeds each day, and none through the night, is the 
proper way to feed children from birth; yes, from con- 
ception — and, what would be better, from the conception 
of the child's parents, back to, and including, the grand- 
parents. 

I do not believe in giving food oftener than three 
times a day from birth. I do compromise with a few 
mothers on four meals a day. Frequent feeding, and over- 
feeding, is the bane of infancy and childhood. Most 
physicians prescribe too much food. 

I quote from the very popular book, "The Care and 
Feeding of Children," by L. Emmett Holt, M.D. (D. 



76 Care of Children and Mothers 

Appleton & Co.) , to show how frequently he has his clients 
feed their children : 

"Give a proper diet for an average child from the eighteenth 
month to the end of the second year." 

The daily schedule should be about as follows: 
6:30 a. m. — Milk, warmed, ten to twelve ounces, given from cup. 
9:00 a. m. — Fruit juice, two to three ounces. 
10:00 a. m. — Cereals: similar to those given from the fourteenth 
to the eighteenth month; they need not be strained, 
although they should be cooked and served in the 
same way. 

Crisp, dry bread, zwieback, or Huntley and 
Palmer biscuits, without butter. 
Milk, warmed, one cup. 
2:00 p. m. — Beef juice and one egg; or both and meat; care 
being taken that the meat is always rare and 
scraped or very finely divided; beefsteak, mutton 
chop, or roast beef may be given. 

Very stale bread, or two pieces of zwieback. 
Prune pulp or baked apple, one to two table- 
spoonfuls. Water; no milk. 
6:00 p. m. — Cereal: farina, cream of wheat, or arrowroot, cooked 
for at least one-half hour, with milk, plenty of salt, 
but without sugar; or, milk toast or stale bread 
and milk. 
10:00 p. m. — If required, ten to twelve ounces of plain milk. 

"What would be a proper schedule for an average child during 
the third year?" 
7:30 a. m. — Cereal: cooked (preferably overnight) for three 
hours, although a somewhat larger variety may be 
given than during the second year; given as before 
with milk or thin cream, salt, but very little sugar. 
Warm milk, one glass. 
A soft egg y poached, boiled, or coddled. 
Bread, very stale or dry, one slice, with butter. 
10:00 a. m. — Warm milk, one cup, with a cracker or piece of very 
stale bread and butter. 
2:00 p. m. — Soup, four ounces; or beef juice, two ounces. Meat: 
chop, steak, roast beef, or lamb or chicken. A 
baked white potato; or, boiled rice or spaghetti — 
both cooked five hours. 



Frequent Feeding 77 

Green vegetable: asparagus tips, string beans, 
peas, spinach; all to be cooked until very soft, and 
mashed, or preferably put through a sieve; at first, 
one or two teaspoonfuls. 

Dessert: cooked fruit — baked or stewed apple, 
stewed prunes. 

Water; no milk. 
6:00 p. m. — Cereal: farina, cream of wheat, or arrowroot, cooked 
for at least one-half hour, with plenty of salt, but 
without sugar; or, milk toast; or, bread and milk; 
or, stale or dry bread and butter, and a glass of 
milk. 

Please note that the doctor prescribes fruit juice at 
nine o'clock after a feed of ten to twelve ounces of milk 
at six-thirty; then in one hour — at ten o'clock — cereals 
or bread, followed by the cup of warm milk. That means 
twenty to twenty-three ounces of milk, besides the cereal 
or bread, for the half-day. 

For the second half-day: beef juice and one egg, or 
both and meat ; very stale bread, or zwieback, prune pulp 
or baked apples; then, in four hours, cereal or milk toast, 
or stale bread and milk ; then, at ten o'clock in the evening, 
he recommends ten or twelve ounces of milk, if the child 
wants it. 

That is stuffing with a vengeance ! If it were not over- 
eating, the combination recommended for the two o'clock 
meal is about as unscientific as it is possible to combine 
food. 

His second table is more abominable than the first; 
for he gives an egg for breakfast, and beef juice and meat 
for the two o'clock dinner, besides bread, fruit, etc., mixed 
in any old, haphazard way. 

I had a patient — a little girl of three years — suffering 
from glandular infection, brought on from having been 
fed strictly according to the Holt book. If the diet had 
been continued, the child would have died from tubercu- 
losis brought on by a diet indorsed by the medical pro- 
fession. 



78 Care op Children and Mothers 

A child that is born of parents who are under the 
influence of gormandizing ; who believe in overeating ; who 
believe that prospective mothers should eat for two, is 
cursed by conventional eating habits. It is prenatally 
trained to overstimulation. And nerves that are educated 
to overstimulating habits will cry out their wants. Hence, 
children born with the overeating curse are restless and 
hard to care for. 

To keep up this gormandizing inheritance, the medical 
profession has adjusted child-feeding to correspond. Be- 
ginning at birth, the offspring of the human cormorant 
is fed every two hours, or oftener. At the end of ten or 
twelve months the feeding is five regulation meals, four 
hours apart, of eight to nine ounces of milk, one- third 
gruel; besides this, one or two ounces of orange juice 
and an ounce of beef juice each day. 

This amount of feeding will cause restlessness, irri- 
tability, and much sickness. Such feeding causes broken 
sleep at night — exactly the opposite result from what 
parents and doctors desire and expect. 

Hot weather is not the time for heavy eating.— Why 
should a child be fed heavily during hot weather? It 
surely does not need heat-producing foods ! 

During the first year milk is sufficient. During the 
second year, and especially in the hot summer weather, 
allow the child to eat all the fruit it will take with a 
relish, either before or after it is given its regulation milk 
meal. Understand, the fruit and milk are to be given at 
the same meal ; or the milk may be given night and morn- 
ing, and fruit without milk at noon ; positively no starch. 
Milk and fruit will agree; but fruit, milk, and starch 
will not. 

It is a mistake to feed starch before two years of age. — 
Children under two or three years of age have trouble in 
converting starch into sugar. They should get their sugar 



Proteid and Starch 79 

from fruit: fresh fruit in summer, and the dry, sweet 
fruits in the winter — raisins, dates, and figs. 

Proteid foods, except milk, not needed. — It is a great 
mistake to feed fish and eggs to children under two or 
three years of age. Indeed, if children are started right, 
it is very doubtful, in my mind, whether there is ever any 
excuse for feeding animal foods, except the dairy prod- 
ucts, at any time during life. 

Starch as a food for children. — The custom of feeding 
babies starch— of feeding cooked starch with milk — is so 
general that those who read my articles, and who are not 
in full sympathy with my no-starch-for-babies idea, desire 
me to give them the best plan of feeding outside of my 
own. There have been a few statements made in these 
directions for the care of children — a few suggestions 
regarding feeding — that are not in keeping with my indi- 
vidual plan for taking care of children. I felt that this 
concession should be made for the benefit of the un- 
sympathetic readers of my system. No doubt there are 
quite a number who read what I write for general infor- 
mation on non-drugging, and some for special information. 
A few have frankly told me that they had no notion of 
adopting all my ideas ; for they believed me an extremist. 
Hence I shall give directions for adding starch to milk, 
and permit those who believe in starch to use it or not, 
as they please. But I wish it understood that I never 
prescribe starch for children under two years of age, 
further than to permit hard bread, toasted, for teething 
children to bite on, instead of a rubber ring. A water 
cracker, toasted, is a bread that is safe for this purpose, 
as little will find its way into the stomach. 

Feeding three times a day. — As stated above, I believe 
in three meals a day for children when they are first born. 
I certainly, then, do not believe in feeding older children 
oftener than three times a day. This answers the question 



80 Care of Children and Mothers 

frequently asked: "How often should a child of one to 
two years of age be fed?" 

When to give lime and sugar. — Those physicians who 
use starch with milk recommend lessening the amount of 
lime-water and milk sugar after the first year, and a few 
of them leave it out of the second year's feeding entirely. 
A broth made from meat is often given as one of the feeds, 
and at this age it is recommended to give the child food 
from a cup ; that is, begin to teach the baby to drink from 
a cup, so as to wean it from the bottle a little later. 

Milk and fresh fruits, such as pears, apples, and ber- 
ries, should he used exclusively during the second year. 
— I believe that the best plan is to continue feeding milk 
almost exclusively until the end of the second year. It 
should be given by bottle, care being exercised that the 
nipples are of such a construction that the child cannot 
nurse too rapidly. The milk is, and should be, churned 
by the mouth in the effort of drawing it from the bottle. 
Drinking from a cup teaches children the bolting habit — 
it teaches them to drink, or to take food into the stomach, 
too rapidly. When fruit is given, have the child eat all 
desired, then follow with the milk. 

Mash fruit into a pulp, and avoid varieties that are 
very sour. 

Authoritative feeding. — The proper diet for a twelve- 
month-old baby, according to Dr. Holt, who is recognized 
by the profession generally as an authority on feeding 
children, is : 

6:30 a. m. — Milk, six to seven ounces; diluted with barley or 

oat gruel, two to three ounces; after the thirteenth 

month taken from a cup. 
9:00 a. m. — Orange juice, one to two ounces. 
10:00 a. m. — Milk, two parts; oatmeal or barley gruel, one part. 

From ten to twelve ounces in all may be allowed. 

It should be given from a cup. 
2:00 p. m. — Beef juice, one to two ounces; or the white of one 

egg, slightly cooked; later the entire egg; or mutton 



Barley 81 

or chicken broth, four to six ounces. Milk and 
gruel, in proportions above given, four to six ounces. 
6:00 p. m. — Same as 10:00 a. m. 

10:00 p. m. — Same as 6:30 a. m., except that the milk may be 
given from the bottle. 

How to prepare barley. — 

Barley water : Soak pearl barley overnight. Then put 
one heaping tablespoonful in a pint of water — no salt. 
Simmer steadily for four hours, adding water when neces- 
sary to keep the quantity up to one pint. It should then 
be strained through muslin. 

Barley gruel : Use from two to four tablespoonfuls of 
the macerated pearl barley, or the prepared barley flour. 
Thoroughly blend the flour with a little cold water. Then 
stir into a pint of boiling water — no salt. Cook for thirty 
minutes in a double boiler, and then strain. Enough 
boiling water should be added to make a full pint. 

Feeding according to authority is too much. — To my 
way of thinking, Dr. Holt advises altogether too much 
food for any child between twelve and twenty-four months. 
Instead of giving milk diluted with barley gruel, it 
would be better to give the straight milk — six to ten 
ounces three times a day, depending upon the amount that 
the child can digest well. 

What can be done to cure a child of restlessness at 
night? — Stop food from six o'clock in the evening to six 
in the morning. It will take several nights to overcome 
the night-eating habit ; but, after the habit is broken up, 
the child will sleep all night and give no trouble what- 
ever; and it will be easier to care for, because not so 
restless, through the day. 

Irritability of babies, children, and grown people is 
brought on from overstimulating habits. It is a sign of 
enervation. Nerve impotency always follows stimulation 
beyond normal requirements. Lay mothers must know 
that food is stimulating, and, when given in excess of 



82 Care of Children and Mothers 

needs, must be followed by enervation. Excitement is 
stimulating. Children that are handled much, and that 
are subjected to the attention of strangers, are made 
restless from such overstimulation. 

The child should be fed moderately, and kept away 
from excitement ; and it should not be allowed to chill. 

Keep sick babies warm. — Sick children chill easily. 
In hot weather, overfed children are restless; they kick 
the covering off, and chill. The combined influence of 
overfeeding and chilling causes much sickness and many 
summer diseases in children. 

Diarrhea and its significance.— A teething child with 
intestinal indigestion at the beginning of hot weather- 
by the middle of June — is in a precarious state ; for, unless 
nursed and cared for correctly, it can hardly get through 
to September. This is truer of children in the middle and 
eastern states than of those in the West, and especially in 
the inter-mountain states. 

Fermentation. — The cause of diarrhea — in fact, the 
cause of about all the diseases of children — is fermenta- 
tion; and there is much less fermentation in the inter- 
mountain states than there is in the eastern, middle, and 
southern states. 

What causes fermentation? — Hot, humid weather 
favors rapid growth — rapid change, physiological and 
pathological. The higher the forms of life — the higher 
the chemical complexity — the more unstable, the more 
tendency for change, and the more tendency there is to 
revert back to primary elements. A fertilized egg breaks 
down early in hot, humid weather. Enervated people — 
old and very young people — should not eat eggs in hot, 
humid weather, unless they can get those that are pro- 
duced under conditions guaranteeing sterilization. 

Hot, humid weather is enervating; and when there is 
a lack of nerve energy, normal resistance is lost, and the 
animal, be it human or brute, has less power to maintain 



Hot Weather Enervates 83 

a normal health standard. Young children must be fed 
food that is procured from strictly continent sources. Milk 
from mothers, or from animals, must not be de-energized 
by being under reproductive excitement. 

Nursing mothers must be allowed to live continent 
lives. — Milk produced under incontinent influences and 
in hot, humid weather is liable to cause sickness when 
fed to young, teething children; and, if fed to those with 
impaired health, it continues the ill-health. Too great 
care cannot be given to the source of food supply; and 
then the care of the food, and the utensils through which 
the food is conveyed to the child's stomach, must receive 
the most intelligent care. 

Hot weather enervates. — Hot weather having an ener- 
vating influence on human life, care should be given not 
to add other enervating influences. Nursing mothers 
should be free from every excitement; their minds should 
be free from care and worry, and their bodies free from 
all influences that will overheat or tire. 

Care of children when they are feeling uncomfortable. 
— If a child should be feeling uncomfortable, fretful, 
irritable, showing slight indications of bowel disturbance, 
such as curds or other undigested food in movements from 
bowels, or diarrhea, stop all food except fruit juice. Please 
understand we are assuming that the time is hot weather — 
July — a time when children often get sick from overfeed- 
ing, or feeding out of bottles or other utensils that have 
not been properly prepared by scalding and sunning. Any 
kind of fresh fruit that the child appears to take with a 
relish may be fed to it under these circumstances. Mash 
and strain blackberries; they will fit the palate, as well 
as the digestion, of more children than any other kind of 
fruit. When blackberries cannot be had, use pears or mild 
eating-apples mashed into a pulp. If the child appears 
not to enjoy fruit, do not insist on its being taken. 
Almost any of the fresh summer fruits may be given to 



84 Care of Children and Mothers 

a child under these circumstances, but the fruit should 
be mashed and run through a sieve or cullender. The 
Concord grape should be scalded — not enough to cook 
it, but enough to overcome the tendency of the skins to 
disturb the stomach. Dip the grapes in boiling water for 
a few seconds, then run cold water over them, and put 
them through a fruit press. Give the child all it appears 
to take with a relish three times a day ; and, between the 
fruit meals, water as frequently as it will take it. 

When to resume feeding. — When all symptoms of indi- 
gestion have disappeared, resume former feeding; at first 
about one-fourth the amount formerly eaten, and increase 
carefully daily. 

Children should he given plenty of water; they are 
often thirsty, not hungry. — Children that are just begin- 
ning to break down from improper care and hot weather 
will usually take freely of water, but they do not care for 
anything else. Many mothers make the mistake of satisfy- 
ing the thirst of sick children with milk, instead of offering 
them water; and these unfortunate children, on account 
of their thirst, will drink or nurse milk, much to their 
detriment. Indeed, many children are killed because 
mothers make the mistake of believing that a thirsty 
child is hungry. All mothers should understand, first, 
last, and all the time, that milk is a food and not a drink. 
Children should be offered water frequently through the 
hot weather, and daily at all other times in the year. If 
this is attended to carefully, many children will be saved 
sick spells; for the substitution of milk, when water is 
needed, would be quite sufficient to make a grown person 
sick — and how very much more certainly a little child that 
does not have a great resistance ! 

Changing food. — One of the most common mistakes 
made by doctors, nurses, and mothers is the frequent 
changing of food when the child has been forced into 
stomach and bowel derangement from overfeeding. In the 



Changing Food 85 

first place, it should be clearly established in every mind 
that little children will not be sick with digestive derange- 
ments unless they are fed beyond their digestive capacity. 
The capacity varies greatly. It should be understood, and 
never forgotten, that what some child eats, or has eaten, 
is no criterion by which to feed others. Every child is a 
law unto itself, and must be cared for individually. On 
very hot days, if mothers have not been careful to keep 
the children as cool as they should be, they will become 
enervated from the heat. On account of the lowering of 
nerve energy, they cannot take care of the usual amount 
of food, and if they are given the full amount, indigestion 
and bowel trouble may follow; indeed, they are almost 
sure to follow. Consideration must be given to the amount 
of nerve energy possessed by a child. If, from any cause, 
the mother or nurse is suspicious that the child is ener- 
vated, the amount of food taken must be cut down. If the 
child is really sick, no food at all, except a little fruit 
juice, should be given until the symptoms have passed 
away. Do not insist on the child taking fruit juice unless 
it can take it with relish. 

Changing food does not rest overworked digestion. — 
Changing the food is not relieving the digestive organs of 
the tax put upon them. The food to which the child is 
accustomed is the food, of all foods, that should be trusted 
to agree when a child has been sick and is recovering. 
It is well to emphasize an unrecognized truth; namely , 
digestive derangements of nursing babies are not once in 
a hundred times due to the QUALITY of the food — milk — 
but they are due to the QUANTITY. After a child has 
had its digestion disturbed, the time when it is beginning 
to recover is not the proper time to try new food. The 
stomach will tolerate the food to which it has been accus- 
tomed much better than it will unaccustomed foods. The 
habit of changing from one food to another is one of the 



86 Care of Children and Mothers 

stupendous blunders of child-raising; and when it is done 
in the treatment of cholera infantum and its sequels, or 
the broken-down state of digestion following other dis- 
eases, we have the most common cause of infantile 
mortality. As incongruous as it appears, a change in 
food is made when a fast is necessary; and death is the 
penalty. 

What is the best food for a sick child? — When asked 
what I consider the best food for children under such cir- 
cumstances, I invariably say : No food at all is what the 
child needs, until all indications of deranged stomach and 
bowels have been overcome. Then begin with the food to 
which the child is accustomed; but be sure that no more 
is given than can be digested — certainly not more than 
one-fourth, and perhaps one-eighth, of the quantity that 
it has been in the habit of taking should be given to start 
with. Then gradually increase — but watch; and if there 
is any tendency for the bowel symptoms to return, or the 
stomach to become upset, miss the next feeding, and then 
go back to an amount small enough to be taken care of by 
the depleted or enervated digestive organs. 

third to fifth year 
Owing to the fact that children three years of age do 
not chew well, it is better to have the cereals cooked. 
They should be cooked in a double boiler. Add a little 
salt,* and milk one-half cream; no sugar. At noon a child 
may be fed a soft-boiled egg, or a small dish of well-made 
cottage cheese, and any kind of fruit that the market 
affords. In the winter time, a baked apple; or, if the child 
will enjoy the apple raw, let it have all that it wants at 
the regular fruit meal. In cold weather, raisins, dates, or 
figs are the best fruits ; in the summer time, all the berries 



*When I say add salt, I mean very little; and I am not sure 
but that no salt would be better. 



Third to Fifth Year 87 

or other fresh fruit it wants for the fruit meal, changing 
about to please the taste. Once or twice a week the child 
may have what bananas it wants. The bananas should be 
ripe, but not overripe. Bananas should not be fed to chil- 
dren when they are soft and beginning to break down. 
Positively no bread is to be taken in this meal. In the 
evening have toasted bread. It should be made of one- 
third whole-wheat and two-thirds white flour, baked in the 
form of a loaf, and then sliced and toasted ; or biscuit can 
be made very thin, and baked thoroughly; or it can be 
made an inch thick, and then split and toasted; or thor- 
oughly cooked oatmeal, corn meal, or rice may be used. 
Dress with rich milk — no sugar. 

If care is taken, the child may be taught to eat the 
puffed wheat and puffed rice correctly. The breakfast 
foods, or the cereals of the ready-to-eat sort, should not be 
served with milk. They must be eaten dry. Little chil- 
dren must be taught to eat dry toast and butter, or the 
dry cereals, and then follow with a glass of milk; and the 
milk should be taken a teaspoonful at a time. 

As soon as the child can masticate a salad, it should 
have a salad with the noon meal : an egg, soft-boiled, 
poached, or scrambled, and a good-sized combination salad 
— all the child will take. If desired, nuts may be ground 
up and mixed with the salad, leaving out the egg. About 
twice a week baked potato may be added to the salad. In 
making the salad, the vegetables should be crisp and fresh : 
lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, equal parts, with a very 
small bit of onion ; dressed with salt and olive oil. Chil- 
dren should be taught to take a salad every day. Twice 
a week baked potato or boiled potato may be added to the 
salad; twice a week nuts. The pecan is the best nut. It 
should be ground and put into the salad. There is no 
objection to cottage cheese every day at this meal. One 
or two soda crackers, with a little butter on them, may 



88 Care of Children and Mothers 

be eaten with a dish of salad, or the toasted bread and 
butter with the salad. The variety for the noon meal may 
be toasted bread and butter, followed with milk. When 
the child would prefer fruit, it may have all the fruit it 
wants — I mean the fresh, uncooked fruit; and if it wishes 
to satisfy its desire for food in the evening with fruit, the 
mother should not worry because the child is not getting 
enough to eat. In cold weather, the sweet fruits — namely, 
raisins, dates, or figs — may be eaten with the fresh fruits. 



Chapter IV 



CARE OF CHILDREN FROM FIVE YEARS 
TO FULL DEVELOPMENT 



FOOD 




F PARENTS wish their school boys and girls 
to get on well, they must conserve their 
nerve energy. Children should go to bed 
early — they should have regular hours for 
going to bed and getting up. They should 
not be permitted to lounge after getting-up 
time. Whenever a pupil is nervous, irri- 
table, and showing no relish for the food offered, but is 
willing to eat something else, he should be excused from 
school, kept in bed, and given water frequently, but no 
food until his irritability has given place to a happy state 
of mind. Then for several days give toasted bread, butter, 
and a glass of milk for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, until 
his nervous system has become normal. 

Self-control is one of the most important qualities of 
character. If teachers, guardians, and parents do not have 
it, they cannot impart it. Order is another important 
quality of character, and necessary to success. Punctu- 
ality is equally important ; indeed, the others are not pos- 
sessed in full without it. 

Cleanliness of body and mind is a necessity. But 
the greatest virtue of all is reverence for law and order. 
I mean natural law and order. 

The people have been quite faithfully teaching the 
young to respect and obey a supreme power. This teach- 



90 Care of Children and Mothers 

ing is, and has always been, rather mystifying and in- 
tangible. In its practical application it appears to have 
fallen short of bringing health to the people. It appears 
to me that, to obviate the crime of universal sickness and 
premature death, it would be well to teach our children 
respect and reverence for the laws of our being. In doing 
so, we shall have a better chance of building a race of 
sober, healthy people who do right for right's sake. 

Children should be taught early in life that, if they 
would live long and enjoy life and health, and be possessed 
of all the mental and physical strength possible for them 
to have, they must learn what natural laws are, and then 
obey them. 

They must know that food is necessary, and that, when 
taken in moderation, it builds the body and mind; but 
that, when taken in excess, it brutalizes, vulgarizes, and 
causes disease and early death. 

Children should know that to make a pleasure of eat- 
ing and drinking is to build a sensual nature. Eating 
should be sufficient to build the body and keep up repairs. 
When taken in excess of this amount, it produces disease, 
animalizes and handicaps the mind. 

Young people should know that the mind may be 
handicapped by sensuality, and that this is the usual 
cause of all man's failures. Everything else being equal, 
the man with bad habits is held down. Many poor men 
are poor because of sensuality. Lack of ambition is 
caused by sensuality. If the shiftless person is prevented 
from indulging his love of idleness, he will learn to love 
work. The lazy boy and the indolent girl are food 
drunkards. They eat too much ; because of idleness, they 
fail to breathe deeply; the circulation of their blood is 
sluggish from inactivity; hence the secretions and excre- 
tions are retained, and they are autotoxemic — poisoned 
(drunk) on their own waste products that could not be 



Food 91 

got rid of by activity — by thinking hard and working 
hard. 

The sick boy is a drunkard. He gets drunk on his own 
waste matter. Such drunkenness keeps him from making 
progress in school. When he starts out in life, he fails to 
get on — he cannot succeed because his brain is dull and 
stupid, and because he fails to see the opportunities that 
are before him every day. 

Students must play hard, study hard, eat moderately, 
and cultivate a happy mind by getting high marks in their 
lessons. 

The boy who eats meat, bread, potatoes, and coffee for 
breakfast will not keep up with his class. 

Breakfasts for school boys and girls should be: oat- 
meal mush or corn-meal mush, and unskimmed milk; or 
dry breakfast foods with butter, followed with milk; bis- 
cuits, butter, and honey, followed with milk, not oftener 
than twice a week ; for Sunday morning, cakes, muffins, or 
waffles, butter, maple syrup, and milk; positively no 
sugar with the breakfast foods, and no eating between 
meals. 

Lunch : all the fruit desired ; once a week, pie and 
milk ; once a week, plain cake and milk. 

Dinner: meat, fish, chicken, cheese, or nuts, with non- 
starchy vegetables and a salad or a slaw, every other day ; 
the alternate days, instead of meat : potatoes, corn bread, 
navy or butter beans, with the cooked, non-starchy vege- 
tables and salad or slaw, leaving lemon juice out of the 
salad. 

When whole-wheat bread, butter, and milk are pre- 
ferred for dinner, these may be eaten in place of the meat 
and vegetables. 

When lessons are hard and the student is falling be- 
hind, eating should be light: fruit for breakfast; milk for 
lunch; and toasted bread and milk for dinner. If neces- 



92 Care of Children and Mothers 

sary to fast for a day or two, to clear the mind and help 
it to concentrate, it should be done; for it is dangerous to 
allow a pupil to drop behind his class because of a hazy 
state of the mind brought on by heavy eating. The 
majority of failures in life begin in the discouragement 
brought on by dropping behind in the studies at school. 
Wrong eating is the primary cause. 

CLOTHING AND BATHING 

Children need not be dressed for the home or the 
schoolroom much more warmly in the winter than in the 
summer. The habit people have of changing light under- 
wear for heavy, because autumn has come and it is time to 
change, whether the weather has grown colder or not, is a 
mistake that causes a lot of catching cold in the fall. 

Children should wear gauze, or very light cotton or 
linen, underwear in hot weather. This should not be 
changed until the thermometer registers forty degrees 
Fahrenheit; then ordinary light-weight underwear, with 
medium-weight stockings and shoes, may be put on, with 
medium-weight outside clothing. For ordinary cold 
weather, children should have medium-weight coats and 
cloaks; for cold and blustery weather, wraps that come 
down to the heels, and heavy enough to keep warm; over- 
shoes if necessary ; enough outside clothing to meet the re- 
quirements of very cold weather. Homes and schoolrooms 
are kept at a summer temperature; hence it is improper 
for children to be dressed for cold weather when at home 
or in school. When children are overclothed, fed heating 
food, and kept in hot houses, is it any wonder that they 
catch cold often, and are forced into having many diseases 
that are brought on from being overheated? 

Children's diseases should be called hot-house diseases. 
Heat enervates; and the readers of my writings ought to 
know what that means. Enervation always means imper- 



Clothing and Bathing 93 

feet elimination, with accumulation of waste products — 
autotoxemia. 

I say to parents: Do not overclothe your children! 
Their colds come from too much food, the wrong kind of 
food, and being kept too warm. 

A story is a good thing to tell when it carries a moral ; 
hence I shall tell one : 

Thirty-five years ago I was called to the home of a 
country gentleman to see an old lady, the gentleman's 
mother. My patient had the appearance of a well-pre- 
served woman of sixty years of age, but when I accused 
her of being sixty, she, with affected injury, pointed to her 
son, the esquire, and said: "My son there is sixty. My 
age, my last birthday, was eighty-four. I have sent for 
you to have you examine my leg, to see how much I am 
injured. One of the flues was smoking; and I went up on 
top of the house [a two-story country home] to see if I 
could find the cause, and I am ashamed to say I was so 
clumsy that I slipped, and in falling I hurt myself. I 
think my injury is simply a sprain, but I thought it was 
best to find out, and if there is a short road to being 
placed back on my feet, I want it; for I hate the bed. 1 
know what becomes of people of my age when forced to 
go to bed." 

This woman's muscles and flesh were more like those 
of an athletic woman of forty, and her mind was in keep- 
ing. She had gone up on the house, using ordinary lad- 
ders, which she placed without assistance, and without the 
knowledge of her son or other men about the farm. 

While waiting on her, I noticed several children from 
eighteen months to twelve years of age. I asked her if 
they were great-grandchildren. "Indeed not! They are 
grandchildren. They are John's third set" — meaning the 
gentleman referred to before. He had raised two sets of 



94 Care op Children and Mothers 

children, the mothers of whom had died. He was the 
proud father of twenty-two healthy children. 

My patient had given a family reunion on her eighty 
fourth birthday, and one hundred and thirty-five children, 
grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grand- 
children were present. 

I noticed that the children were barefooted, although 
the time of the year was December, with snow on the 
ground. They were running in and out of the house, and 
appeared to go into the snow without concern and as a 
matter of course, as if it were of daily occurrence. The 
esquire told me that he had raised all of his children with 
out shoes. "It is good for them to play in the snow bare- 
footed," he said. "As proof, 1 wish you to know that ] 
have my first doctor's bill to pay for a sick child. They 
get plenty of bread and milk, and have free access to all 
the fruit they can eat, and receive no attention. The 
older children wash, comb, and dress the younger ones. 
We allow them to fight out their own battles and settle 
their own disputes." 

I must add that they were fine specimens of animality. 

Perhaps some reader will have in his mind the ques- 
tion: "How about the morals of such a family?" There 
was no affiliation with the churches. The men, as fast as 
they arrived at manhood, took precedence in stability over 
the young men with whom they were brought up. The 
family stood for honor, honesty, and first-class citizenship. 
They were good, plain, substantial, common-sense people, 
absolutely devoid of the weather-cock type of mind. 

The child of today is pampered too much. Between 
pampering and coddling, the average child is so enervated 
that it is half sick all the time. 

Dress children as advised ; say, for winter, what might 
be called heavy-weight summer clothes, with heavy enough 



Sleep 95 

coats and cloaks, with occasional overshoes, to protect 
against the storm. 

Make them take two tub baths a week for cleanliness. 
Let them sleep in a ventilated bedroom, but not in a draft. 

Children should be put to bed at nine o'clock in the 
summer time, and at seven or eight o'clock in the winter 
time. They should sleep every day from twelve-thirty to 
one- thirty; and, if the school interferes with the midday 
sleep, the school hours should suffer, not the child. The 
school is made for the child, and, if it is not made right, 
the school should be made over, not the child. The child 
is superior to the school. It is of first consideration. 

When parents join together and demand two hours at 
noon, that their children may come home from school, eat, 
and take an hour's sleep, they will get it. 

Any physician whose opinion is worth anything knows 
that the growing child should sleep each day. Children 
under seven should sleep one to two hours in the fore- 
noon, and the same in the afternoon. Children over seven 
should have at least one hour at noon. 

Rest and sleep are needed for the proper development 
of the child's body and mind. School days are too stren- 
uous, and, as a result, the seeds of nervous diseases and 
insanity, as well as of physical diseases, are sown in 
childhood. Rest, mental and physiological, will cure the 
larger percentage of nervous diseases in children as well 
as in grown people. This being true, the remedy points 
back to the causes, which are overstimulation and lack 
of rest ; and these causes go back to embryonic life. 

SLEEP 

Children that are taken care of properly before birth, 
and after birth, will sleep nearly all the time the first 
three or four weeks. Indeed, very healthy children ought 
to sleep, the first week, about twenty-three and one-half 
hours out of every twenty-four, and the second week at 



96 Care of Children and Mothers 

least twenty-three hours each day. Children should be 
put to bed early in the evening. From infancy they should 
be taught to go to bed with the chickens, so to speak — 
as soon as the sun is down. 

Many boys and girls eight to twelve years of age are 
out on the streets in the summer time until ten o'clock, 
and in the winter time until six and seven. This is all 
wrong. In the winter time children should be home, have 
their evening meal, and be in bed by six o'clock; in the 
summer time, by seven or eight o'clock. They should be 
taught from infancy to be dressed for bed, taken to the 
bedroom, put on the bed, and left there to go to sleep. 
They should be educated to go to sleep with nursing. 

Babies under two or three years of age should sleep as 
much as possible — all night and half the day. When 
children are old enough to go to school, they should have 
an hour's sleep some time in the middle of the day. When 
they are not in school, they should have an hour in the 
forenoon and an hour in the afternoon. Many mothers 
declare that their children will not sleep; they are put 
on the bed for a nap in the middle of the day, and they 
will not sleep. Why? Because they have not been brought 
up properly. When necessary, the mother should lie 
down by the side of the child, and then request it to keep 
perfectly quiet, because she, the mother, wishes to sleep. 
If the child can be kept perfectly quiet for five minutes, 
it will be asleep. This is a peculiarity of children, and 
the reason they will not sleep through the middle of the 
day is because their minds are so active, and they are 
prompted to move about so much that they cannot sleep. 

Sick child] en should be perfectly quiet, so that they 
may sleep all the time they aie sick. Theie is nothing so 
healing as sleep. The house must be quiet enough for a 
sick child to sleep. 

Many children have indigestion and are half sick all 
the time because they do not take enough rest. Such 



Sleep 97 

children should be put to bed early, taken up late, and 
taught to sleep a little while in the forenoon, and at least 
an hour in the afternoon. Nothing should be given to pro- 
cure sleep. 

Children that are restless are not in need of drugs. 
They need to have their food taken away from them until 
their nervousness has subsided. 

Mothers should sleep half an hour in the afternoon 
every day. They need it, and they will be the better 
mothers for doing so. If a mother persists in wearing 
herself out, and refuses to take the necessary rest, she 
becomes more or less nervous — sometimes irritable. This 
is reflected in the children, and often the happiness of the 
family is ruined simply because the mother will not lie 
down and take a little rest each day. 




Chapter V 

CHILDREN'S DISEASES AND THEIR 
TREATMENT 

Qy^^^g, F A LAYMAN should start out to find people 
' ** \ i to agree with him about a diet scheme that 
would restrict the amount eaten, and insist 
on proper combinations, he would soon learn 
that there is very little public sympathy for 
people with dietetic delusions. 

I have proved to many unbiased readers 
of my writings, many times over, that germs are a 
legitimate part of decomposition, but not necessarily a 
cause ; for, according to medical belief and teaching, every 
community is full of healthy germ-carriers, and if germs 
were always virile — toxic — they would kill the carriers. 
This being true, we must look for other causes of disease. 
And until we do find the true cause, sickness, pain, and 
death will continue to surprise us by cutting us, and our 
friends, down when we are least expecting it. 

Why should a child in apparently good health be 
stricken down with a severe sickness? It will not do to 
say that germs did it; for the child lives in an atmosphere 
filled with germs ; it lives on soil permeated by germs ; its 
body is full of germs, and it is said that it could not live 
for any length of time in a germ-proof state. This being 
true, I invite mothers to help me discover just what pros- 
trates their children with severe diseases when they are 
least expecting such trouble. 

No child is taken very ill without warning, except 
when poisoned. A sudden prostration without premoni- 



Children's Diseases 99 

tions — without several days of small ailments and com- 
plaints — should be treated as a poisoning. It may be 
ptomaine or other poison. The stomach and bowels 
should be cleared out thoroughly, and positively no food, 
liquid or solid, should be given until the symptoms are all 
gone and the child is feeling well. If the symptoms point 
to an unusual sickness, it would be well to call a phy- 
sician. 

The information most needed by mothers is a knowl- 
edge that will enable them to interpret signs of sickness 
and know how to meet them. 

Until mothers prove that I am mistaken, I would ad- 
vise them to keep sugar out of the children's breakfast 
foods. Why? Because sugar and starch, in combination 
— as in oatmeal and in other breakfast foods — ferment, 
causing an acid stomach ; and an acid state of the stomach, 
built daily for a while, causes bad breath, catarrh, ade- 
noids, tonsilitis, enlargement of the tonsils, besides other 
derangements. The cooked food should be eaten with 
milk, one-third cream. Give oatmeal well cooked with 
milk, one- third cream, and nothing more; or Cream of 
Wheat, or whole wheat, or any other cooked cereal. But 
do not give bread and butter, toasted bread and butter, 
jelly, or cooked or raw fruit, with the breakfast foods. 
Why? Because such mixing favors fermentation, and fer- 
mentation is at the bottom of all diseases. Modern med- 
ical science says that germs cause fermentation. I say 
that we get most of our digestive fermentation by overeat- 
ing and by combining foods in a way to invite it. Food 
that does not digest (physiologically ferment) must take 
on pathological fermentation. And I ask all mothers to 
allow me to prove it to them; not in order to satisfy the 
disputants in this controversy, but to give the people — at 
least the young and growing people — the benefit of the 
truth. If I am right, and the people will join me, I will 



100 Care of Children and Mothers 

put a stop to all the so-called contagious diseases, and put 
vaccination out of business. 

Do not feed more than one kind of food for breakfast. 
I mean, of course, when the breakfast is to be starch — a 
cereal of some kind. Why? Because variety leads to 
overtaxation of digestion, in inducing the child, young 
adult, or even grown folk, to eat too much. No one will 
overeat on one kind of food. By "one food" I do not mean 
a monodiet, in the sense of being confined to one food for 
every meal and for every day in the year; I mean one kind 
of food for breakfast, and a different variety of that par- 
ticular kind for each breakfast, if desired. 

Mothers should have a gauge by which to judge if a 
child, or an adolescent daughter, has had enough to eat. 
My plan solves this question and leaves no doubt. Allow 
all at the table, from children to grown people, to eat all 
desired of the food as I recommend it. If there is a mem- 
ber of the family, young or old, who has no relish for the 
porridge, or any other food that I shall recommend for 
breakfast, that member of the family should fast until a 
relish comes for a simple breakfast. 

No member of the family should come to the table 
when not feeling perfectly well — feeling just as well as de- 
sired — no matter if he has a desire to eat. 

One of the best signs of chronic irritation of the 
stoma ch is a desire to eat when feeling bad and a desire to 
eat all the time. These signs are worth much to him who 
would live out his time and retain health and efficiency. 
To make this criterion of any value, however, the one who 
has such a desire must make it a rule of life never to 
gratify it. Use the mind, and learn to eat enough. 

Mothers must watch their children, and. when there 
are signs of nervousness, manifested by restlessness at 
night, grinding of teeth, wetting of the bed, crossness, irri- 
tability, flushed face, headache, sore throat, bad breath, 



Constipation 101 

constipation, pain, or discomfort, they must begin at once 
to correct the symptoms. 

BAD BREATH AND CONSTIPATION 

If the child has a bad breath that does not come from 
neglected teeth, the bowels must be looked after. The child 
(and when I say "child" I mean all who are of school age, 
and, for that matter, college students) should be taught 
early to keep the mouth clean; also the importance of 
keeping regular bowels. Water should be taken before 
breakfast, lunch, and dinner — a glassful of fresh, cold 
water. If there is constipation, as much water as possi- 
ble should be taken. When necessary, an enema of two 
quarts of warm water and a tablespoonful of salt should 
be given. Avoid enemas when possible, for they build 
obstinate constipation ; but for temporary relief and emer- 
gencies it is necessary to use them. 

When the breath is bad, and cleaning the mouth night 
and morning does not remove it, the child should be put 
on a fruit diet. Give all the fruit desired morning, noon, 
and night, but no other food until the bad breath is gone. 
Cooked prunes may be used at the noon meal, if desired ; 
they have a tendency to move the bowels. 

Raw fruit constipating. — No doubt most of my readers 
know that I contend that raw fruit and raw vegetables 
are constipating. This is true; that is, the tendency of 
these foods is to emphasize sluggishness of the bowels. 
Then a pertinent question would be: If fruit is consti- 
pating, why put a constipated child on a fruit diet? Be- 
cause constipation, as a rule, is due to sluggish organic 
functioning, and this state is brought on in child or adult 
by overeating. As soon as the bad habit of overeating is 
corrected by a complete fast, or a fruit diet, organic func- 
tioning is resumed; consequently a large quantity of bile 
is poured into the intestines, resulting in the cleaning-out 



102 Care of Children and Mothers 

of the bowels. To the casual observer the fruit appears 
to have caused the bowels to move. It is pretty generally 
believed that fruit is laxative and, as a consequence, not 
a fit food for those troubled with diarrhea; but exactly 
the opposite is true. However, if under such circum- 
stances starch and fruit are eaten, the diarrhea will grow 
worse, and people will believe fruit must be given up; but 
the truth probably is that the starch is the real cause of 
the diarrhea. If the starch should be proscribed, and the 
patient given fruit three times a day, the disease would 
be controlled. 

When the child has lost its bad breath, and the consti- 
pation is overcome, it may be given the regulation break- 
fasts, a fruit lunch, and a full dinner in the evening. 

NERVOUSNESS 

When a child is nervous — easily irritated and hard to 
please — it should be kept in bed and given frequent drinks 
of water, but no food for the first twenty-four hours. The 
bowels should be moved, if necessary, by enema. If bet- 
ter, fruit may be given the second day, and every day 
thereafter until perfectly well. It is a foolish mistake 
that mothers make — allowing children to go to school 
when they are not in first-class health in every way, 

GRINDING THE TEETH 

When children grind their teeth and cry out in the 
night, it is an indication of indigestion. It is also a sign 
of eating between meals. The bowels must be looked 
after, and, if there is constipation, an enema may be used. 
Stop the eating between meals. And, until much better, 
the eating should be as follows : fruit for the three meals 
the first day ; then, if better, the eating for a week, or until 
perfectly well, should be fruit for breakfast, and toasted 
whole-wheat bread and butter for lunch. After eating all 



Enuresis and Colds 103 

the toasted bread and butter desired, sip slowly a glass of 
scalded milk. The evening meal should be the same as the 
noon meal. 

ENURESIS 

Wetting the bed is an indication of nerve derangement. 
It is usually brought on from digestive disturbances. 
Children troubled in this way are often very hearty eaters, 
eating too much at meal time and eating between meals. 
A fruit fast for two or three days, with rest in bed, will 
give such cases a good start. If such children have been 
allowed tea, coffee, chocolate, or cocoa, these beverages are 
to be given up. Eating between meals must stop. Break- 
fast should be the dry breakfast foods — flakes, puffed rice 
or wheat — or toasted whole-wheat bread. Butter may be 
used on these foods, but they are to be eaten dry, with 
positively no milk or cream, or fluid of any kind. Every 
morsel is to be thoroughly masticated, and, after the child 
has eaten all it desires, it may sip slowly a glass of milk. 
A fruit meal is to be given at noon, and the morning meal 
may be repeated for the evening meal. 

Parents may feel sorry to see their children deprived of 
the usual variety, but they are wasting their sympathy; 
for it is equivalent to wishing a continuation of disease. 

When parents are intelligent enough to know their 
duty to their children, they will not feel sorry for them 
because they are not eating in a way to make them sick. 

COLDS 

The ordinary cold is disagreeable while it lasts, but it 
is not considered serious. However, it should not be for- 
gotten that many severe and fatal illnesses begin with 
symptoms of a cold. 

It would be well to understand the nature of the slight 
disease known as cold, or the catching-cold habit ; for when 



104 Care of Children and Mothers 

the nature of a disease is known, a rational treatment be- 
comes obvious to every intelligent mind, be it lay or pro- 
fessional. To enable my readers to have a true conception 
of what a rational treatment must be, they should first 
know about the cause. 

Germs cover the entire field of causation, so far as 
modern medical science is concerned. Where a germ has 
not been found to account for a given disease, one is as- 
sumed to exist, and a treatment is based on this hypoth- 
esis. 

I do not believe in the germ theory, because it leaves 
man in such a helpless plight. Suppose this dear old 
world of ours were suddenly bereft of bacteriologists and 
physicians! We should be left hapless and helpless vic- 
tims of germs, with no knowledge of how to avoid disease 
and death. With this thought in mind, even a fool might 
ask: "How did the human race survive the stupidity 
and ignorance of all the past ages up to Louis Pasteur?" 

For the sake of argument, let us accept the present 
medical belief that all diseases are caused by germs. 
What prevents sporadic cases of disease from kindling 
endemics? And why do not endemics create epidemics? 
And epidemics create pandemics? Why is it that in fam- 
ilies of children one or two may have diphtheria, scarlet 
fever, or typhoid fever, and no other member of the family 
takes the disease? The answer may be that as soon as 
the disease breaks out those who are not sick are rendered 
immune. But I must meet this statement with the very 
stubborn fact that this was true before the alleged dis- 
covery of immunization; and it is as true of scarlet fever 
today as in all past time. It must not be forgotten that 
the germ of scarlet fever has not yet been discovered; 
hence its cure and prevention are still in the maze of ob- 
scurity. But, in spite of this fact, scarlet fever has 
declined as rapidly, if not more rapidly, than diphtheria, 



Germs 105 

which disease has been almost entirely wiped out by the 
great discoveries in the line of immunization. 

Germs, and the immunization based on the germ 
theory, will continue to satisfy the bulk of mankind until 
the medical profession changes its style of treating disease 
in this particular way ; or, if the present theory and prac- 
tice is an insanity, then until this phase of mania changes 
into another. 

If the germ theory is true, then it is true that chaos 
reigns, and this world and the inhabitants thereof are here 
by accident, and not by law and order; it is true that 
phenomenon or chance reigns, not the noumenon, or the 
personality of substance. 

Away with such atheism! For there is nothing in 
the universe that has not, in an active or passive state, 
properties that distinguish it from other things and from 
nothing. This is the soul of things, and things are built 
in it's image. It is said that man is built in the image of 
his maker, and he is. The maker of man, of animal, of 
plant, of crystal, of water, is the life-principle. The sum 
of all must he God; for it is everywhere, and is the build- 
ing or evolving power of the universe. 

Building is subjected to laws that are fixed and eter- 
nal. What does that mean? It means that law al- 
ways operates the same under a given, or fixed, environ- 
ment; but change the environment, and the law's opera- 
tions are different. For example: When health is at a 
certain standard, the influence of all germs is innocent; 
break down the health — reduce the nerve energy — and 
innocent germs become toxic and are then said to pro- 
duce disease. But reason declares that the original cau^e 
is still operating, and to effect a cure menns the restora- 
tion of lost resistance, not the killing of germs; for germs 
are omnipresent, and the only way of preventing their 
metamorphosis into a toxic state is to keep their habitat 



106 Care of Children and Mothers 

free from decomposition — keep the human body sweet and 
clean — which means full health. When this is done, the 
body is immune; which means that the body is not manu- 
facturing toxins with which to intoxicate germs. How 
can a germ be toxic at one time and not at another? 
What is the toxicity? An alkaloid? 

When elements are brought together — purposely or not 
— the output depends on the number and kinds of ele- 
ments, and the environment. A bean planted in the earth, 
and given warmth and moisture, produces a large stalk 
and many beans. If planted in an animal's stomach, it be- 
comes food out of which tissue and life are built. If 
placed in an environment unfavorable to life, its albumin 
is converted into toxins. 

Water heated above a given temperature is converted 
into steam, which, if confined, may be used as power. If 
harnessed properly, it will move a large train. The same 
water taken into an animal's body gives life and power, 
and helps build flesh. 

If man has life, health, and activity, he conforms, 
knowingly or unknowingly, to the laws of his nature and 
the laws of his environment. And it is not reasonable to 
believe that law's requirements will either be many or 
complicated; nor that they will need interpretation by a 
laboratory expert — by a man drilled in microscopical, 
physiological, and chemical science — to prevent man's ex- 
tinction, or before the human race can ward off disease 
and enjoy health and life. Man is not the only animal 
that must adjust himself to law's requirements. Even the 
earthworm must go down, or go up, in answer to the de- 
mands of its nature. And it should be known, if it is pos- 
sible to get the mind of man to grasp it, that nearly all 
the sorrow, pain, and premature death he suffers are of 
his own building. 

One truth has been discovered, even though it is not 
thought of often and seldom acted upon; namely: Man 



Colds 107 

and animal in their natural state are healthy. Disease is 
a development of civilization — of domestication. It is 
produced by housing, clothing, and overeating. Hence, 
the science of health necessary is to understand in what 
way this artificial life militates against health — in what 
way it differs from nature — and then to make the neces- 
sary adjustments. 

On account of retained excretions, and decomposition 
of imperfectly digested food, bad odors are sent out, which 
attract scavengers of all kinds — germs of all kinds as well 
as parasites. By living in such a manner as to convert 
the body into a habitat for parasites — convert the mouth, 
throat, stomach, intestines, lungs, or liver into an arti- 
ficial home for germs and worms — proof positive is fur- 
nished that the body-defenders are broken down; and, un- 
til life is righted and full nerve energy restored, a cure 
cannot be said to have taken place. 

Who have tapeworm, hookworm, and other intestinal 
parasites? Only those whose secretions have lost their 
defensive potency. To cure, then, means more than get- 
ting rid of the germ or worm; for that only brings the 
body back to where it was before infestation took place. 
Of course, if those wiio are cured ( ?) can be built up, and 
their normal resistance restored, before infestation takes 
place again, health will be permanent. 

Just the type of disease that will manifest must de- 
pend upon the elements combining, a few of which we will 
name : the mind ; the fluids of the body ; the food intake — 
its combinations, preparation, and amount; and, neither 
last nor least, inoculations and environments. It may be 
safely asserted that the wisest physician cannot know all 
the elements combining to cause any disease; but he must 
know enough, the removal of which will break up the com- 
bination ; after which elimination of the disorganized ele- 
ments will take place. 



108 Care of Children and Mothers 

So much for germs, and so much for the real cause of 
disease. It is necessary that I explain my position on the 
germ subject every little while; and, in writing on chil- 
dren's diseases, I need to remind my readers, so that they 
may not confuse my beliefs with those prevalent. 

Catching cold. — Catching cold means that children are 
clothed or housed too warmly, or that they are overfed 
and constipated. 

A simple cold results from lowered resistance. The 
skin function is reduced. And as the mucous membrane, 
wherever found, is really the lining skin — the skin within 
— it may be said, when we have a cold, that the skin of the 
entire body, inside and out, fails to function properly, due 
to lowered bodily resistance. 

The surface of the body is made to suffer too much 
from heat by overclothing, hot houses, and overheating 
food. Cold is a disease coming from too much heat. 
It is a fact, easily demonstrated, that men suffer more 
from catarrh than women. Why? Because the average 
man dresses more warmly than women. I have had 
husbands appeal to me to use my influence in inducing 
their wives to wear more clothes. My reply has usually 
been : "You have an annoying catarrh and the catching- 
cold habit, I see." "Yes, and I would save my wife from 
cultivating the same disease, or a worse one." "Did you 
cultivate yours by wearing low neck and short sleeves?" 
This question always compels the lords and masters of 
some women to look down their noses into space. They 
had not thought of that. No, the rule is that we never 
think of any subject except from our little narrow point 
of view. 

Everybody wears too many clothes. And men sin 
against the Adamic fashion more than women. If they 
were in the house as much as women, they would suffer 
more than they do now. Office men suffer most; men in 
the open air suffer least. 



Colds 109 

Children should be kept out doors. — As I have stated 
before, many children appear to be born with a cold. This 
is due to their mothers' overeating, overclothing, and 
oxygen starvation. Excessive clothing and improperly 
kept houses, with overfeeding, will make invalids of all 
children cared for in this way — all that are not killed in 
infancy. 

We are told by present-day medical science that colds 
are caused by germs, and that there is a special germ caus- 
ing influenza. Those who prefer to believe this fallacy 
may do so ; but the right idea of cause points to a rational 
cure. If a specific germ causes cold, and other germs 
cause influenza, tonsilitis, and quinsy, all the cure re- 
quired would be to sterilize the patient and make his en- 
vironment sterile by the use of germicides. The latter 
processes are not believed to be effectual by those who pre- 
scribe them, and the former prepare the patient for the 
undertaker who performs the last sad rites. 

Under this modern cure, colds spring up, flourish, and 
lead off into catarrh or other diseases. A percentage get 
well — that is, the symptoms subside until another attack. 
The catching-cold habit must be broken up, by raising the 
health standard ; and doping with live or dead germs will 
not do it. 

When the atmospheric conditions further enervate 
those already enervated from bad personal habits, an 
ordinary cold is liable to take on a type that is named 
influenza, pink-eye, la grippe, epizootic, etc. What is the 
meaning of colds being featured in these various styles? 
Weather conditions are such as to depress or enervate; 
this favors fermentation or the generation of pathological 
fermrnts (germs, if you please). What, under normal 
conditions, would be an ordinary cold takes on a septic 
state. Pneumonia becomes typhoid-pneumonia ; la grippe 
evolves a septic state of the blood; and the mortality from 



110 Care op Children and Mothers 

these diseases is very high — usually large among the nat- 
urally enfeebled. 

Teach children to keep their mouths and teeth clean; 
and, whether they are taught to pray or not, if mothers 
would fit their children for Heaven, they should teach 
them the most important knowledge for a human being to 
possess ; namely, keep the bowels regular. 

The most vulgar habit that is common to the human 
race, and becoming more universal all the time, is consti- 
pation; and it is started from neglect in childhood. 
Parents and teachers are to blame. If parents and teach- 
ers would teach children the great necessity of regu- 
lar bowels — and not only teach the need, but force, if nec- 
essary, the daily practice of the habit — we should soon 
count appendicitis, ovaritis, and tuberculosis among the 
diseases of the past. So important are daily movements 
from the bowels that I for one would vote for parents, 
guardians, and teachers to change the customary question 
of asking children if they have said their prayers, to ask- 
ing if their bowels have moved. Possibly, if this thought 
is kept before the child's mind until the end of school life, 
it may remember it after that time. 

Do not give drugs. Teach the child to drink a glass 
of cold water before each meal and at the end of meal 
time, and to go to stool at a regular time each day. The 
only reason why the bowels are constipated or irregular is 
because of neglect. If my suggestions were adopted, con- 
stipation would go in one generation. Drugs for moving 
the bowels, next to neglect of the bowels, are the greatest 
detriment to health of any habits practiced by mankind. 

Do not allow the child to get overheated; keep the 
bowels regular; and colds will not be very common. 

It should be known that eating too many sweets, and 
eating between meals, build the catching-cold habit. 

Children having access to a warm bathroom should be 
taught the habit of taking a cold sponge-bath. Rubbing 



Colds 111 

the body after the bath should be attended to, and its im- 
portance taught to children. Hot water should not be 
used, except when necessary for cleanliness. 

Bedrooms should be clean ; closets should be clean, free 
from junk, and well aiied; beds should be clean. Look 
out for trouble if pillows and mattresses are old and full 
of secretions. It is better to make them with fresh straw 
four times a year than to sleep on a fine mattress worked 
overtime. Bedrooms should be well ventilated, but have 
no drafts. 

Babies should be allowed to remain nude several hours 
daily. They must be inured to the cold sponge-bath and 
lots of dry towel- or hand-rubbing to the entire surface of 
their bodies. When the sun is not too hot, children should 
be allowed to play in it, or in a room with a glass roof and 
sides. Indeed, the playroom for winter should be on this 
order. The nude habit should be practiced throughout 
life. Mothers and fathers need it. 

To cure or get rid of a cold. — Stop the child's eating, 
and clear out the bowels. Have it drink all the water 
possible. It should drink often — every half-hour or hour. 
An enema of quite warm water and a little salt should be 
used — a tablespoonful to a quart of water. Always use 
all the enema that can be endured. When possible, the 
child should stay out of doors all day. If the child is very 
young, the mother or nurse should take it into the open 
air in the daytime, and allow it to sleep in a cool, well- 
ventilated bedroom. 

If the cold is not gone the second day, go through the 
same routine, except that a little fruit may be given morn- 
ing, noon, and night. Follow this program until all symp- 
toms of cold are gone. No bath is to be given unless the 
patient is too sick to be up; then a hot bath should be 
given following an enema. The bath water should be as 
hot as can be borne without discomfort, and the duration 
of the bath long enough to relax the patient and bring 



112 Care op Children and Mothers 

comfort. As soon as the patient is able to be up and out, 
long walks in the open air should be indulged in, and dry 
towel-rubbings to the entire surface of the body should be 
taken on going to bed and on getting up. 

This is a quick way to get over a cold. If, instead, 
staying in the house, toasting the feet, and eating three or 
more times each day are indulged in, and the bowels are 
neglected, inflammation or fever, or both, may develop. 

COUGHS 

Simple coughs are built by feeding a cold. A pneu- 
monia may be built by eating under such circumstances. 
When a cough without lung symptoms develops with a 
cold, it means irritation of the stomach. It will go away 
after the bowels are moved and food has been withheld for 
twenty-four hours — at the most, within forty-eight hours. 
If, however, the cough persists after the bowels are 
cleared out, and no food has been taken for two days, then 
the lungs should be carefully examined to see if there is a 
slight pneumonia or pleurisy. If there are no symptoms 
of either disease, then the heart should be examined; or 
there may be a tonsilar inflammation, or an elongation of 
the uvula, or possibly an obscure trouble in the ear, nos^, 
teeth, or at the base of the brain. Do not look farther 
than the stomach, so long as eating is persisted in and 
drugs are taken. 

Common Cough (Winter Cough). — There is a common 
cough, peculiar to winter, which has been the cause of 
building many colossal fortunes for patent-medicine men, 
and has furnished steak and office rent for doctors when 
these necessities would have otherwise shied them. 

The winter cough that respects no age; that invades 
the school, especially on days when the wind is cold ; that 
disturbs the attendants at church, lecture, and theater, 
comes from an irritable state of the mucous membrane of 



Coughs 113 

the throat, due to an habitually acid state of the stomach 
brought on by indigestion — not an indigestion that dis- 
tresses the stomach or bowels. The victim of this cough 
may look well, and present no symptoms further than a 
cough. Such coughs are made worse by exercise. Boys 
and girls, after playing hard, may be thrown into a 
paroxysm of coughing that will be very distressing. 
Grown people will be equally distressed if they do any- 
thing that forces breathing. Men increase this cough by 
smoking or chewing tobacco. The reason that this cough 
is more prevalent in winter is because cold air aggravates 
it. Mouth-breathers suffer most. 

Children should be looked after carefully, and their 
bowels regulated. If constipated, give them such treat- 
ment as has been recommended in previous chapters on 
the "Care of Children." There must be a stop put to the 
eating of yeast bread, cakes, pies, and candies. Until the 
cough is under control, it would be well to give the boy 
or girl what fresh fruit may be taken with a relish for 
breakfast; a vegetable soup, without bread, toast, or 
crackers, for lunch; and fruit again for dinner. Repeat 
this diet until the cough is gone; then bread or toasted 
biscuit with butter, followed with a glass of milk, for 
breakfast; fruit for lunch; and a simple dinner of meat 
or broth and vegetables, or whole-wheat bread and milk. 

Bread and butter must not be eaten with syrup, jelly, 
fruit butters, or preserves. 

Fruits cured or prepared in sugar, if eaten at all, 
should be eaten at the fruit meal, but not with starch. 
Mixing sugar, fruit, starch, and meat together, overeating, 
and eating between meals, is what builds winter cough. 

Those who think that children will starve if they go 
without food for a day or two will not be likely to restore 
their children to health; but, instead, they will continue 
to palliate until the winter cough ends in tuberculosis; 
bed- wetting leads on to diabetes; gastric fevers are sup- 



114 Care op Children and Mothers 

planted by ulceration of the stomach; constipation 
develops into colitis, appendicitis, ovaiitis, and other 
diseases of the reproductive organs, and such auxiliary 
diseases as goiter and fibroid tumor. 

CATARRH 

As my readers know, I do not believe in single causes. 
All diseases have many causes, both of a physical and 
of a mental character. There is one disease of children, 
however, that comes as near having one cause as it is 
possible for any disease to have, and that is catarrh of 
infancy and childhood. I have seen infants who were 
apparently born with catarrh. Indeed, incumbered 
children — those weighing twice as much as they should 
when born — often develop catarrh within a few days after 
birth. No doubt their bodies present a favorable soil on 
which to grow colds. Apparently all that is necessary 
to start the catarrhal process is the siveetened icater so 
often given by mothers or nurses. There appears to be 
a silly notion, which has become quite general, that babies 
require sugar in their water, and that later they must 
have salt, and other condiments, in their food. Because 
fathers and mothers have cultivated an abnormal desire 
for sugar, the various pickles, spices — in fact, all condi- 
ments and dressings — they think their children have no 
desire for food in its natural state, or when cooked and 
served in the simplest way. As a consequence of this 
false notion, the newborn babe is given sugar or sweetened 
water, because it does not have a relish for water as pre- 
sented t>y nature. Consequently, as hinted above, sugar 
becomes almost, if not quite, the only cause of catarrh in 
babyhood; and catarrh becomes the soil on which all 
childhood diseases are grown. Sugar is a topical irritant 
to all mucous membranes. 

It must not be forgotten, however, that too frequent 
feeding is also an original cause. 



Catarrh 115 

The doctor starts the endless chain of diseases of child- 
hood by recommending and insisting on sweetening arti- 
ficial foods, such as are fed to nursing babies, to imitate 
the mother's milk in sweetness. Perhaps, if mothers did 
not eat sugar or candy, or food dressed with sugar, their 
milk would not be sweeter than other animals' milk. It 
is true that the doctor recommends sugar of milk — an 
artificially prepared sugar from animals' milk — but, like 
all prepared sugars, it is injured as a food by the process 
of making, and, in reality, is no better than cane sugar; 
the only advantage being that it is not nearly so sweet 

Sugar invites— and, in fact, causes — fermentation. 
Fermentation causes irritation of the mucous membrane 
of the alimentary canal — the digestive tube from the lips 
to the anus. What is this irritation? Sugar is a chemical 
irritant; the fermentation caused by sugar is also an 
irritant. The latter, fermentation, acts as a poison, and, 
according to the law of self-preservation, the mucous mem- 
brane of the alimentary canal refuses to absorb it. The 
mucous glands pour out an extra amount of alkaline 
secretion to dilute and neutralize it. Where the sugar- 
feeding, and its consequent fermentation, are continuous, 
a chronic state of irritation of mucous membranes is 
developed which we call catarrh. 

When children are old enough to take bread and 
mushes, sugar and milk are given in ever-increasing 
amounts, with ever-increasing irritation. The throat and 
nose are kept in a state of continuous irritability, and in 
time the tonsils become enlarged, and adenoids — mucous 
tumors — develop. The normal alkalinity of the blood is 
more or less lowered, and resistance to disease is likewise 
lowered. Catarrh may be said to prepare the way for all 
children's diseases. 

The story of disease runs as follows: irritation, which 
is overstimulation ; then follows enervation — checked 
elimination; then autotoxemia. 



1 16 Care op Children and Mothers 

TUBERCULOSIS 

The foundation for tuberculosis is laid in catarrh of 
childhood. It should be known that a perfectly con- 
structed child — an anatomically or mechanically cor- 
rectly formed child — will not develop tuberculosis. 

The diseases which catarrh makes possible are those 
that there is a constitutional predisposition to take on 
when conditions are favorable. 

Knowledge of human beings, as revealed by the test- 
tube, microscope, and blood tests, will do to dally with 
when time is worth nothing; but when life and death, or 
the important question of healthy children, are to be set- 
tled, a human being acquainted with the life and habits 
of other human beings would be more trustworthy. 

Tuberculous subjects are built for tuberculosis, and 
only require enervating habits to break down resistance 
and start the disease. Those who develop stomach dis- 
eases are imperfectly built. This is true of all diseases. 
The apoplectic has a construction of the nervous system — 
of head, neck, and heart — that favors building this dis- 
ease. 

Wrong life — wrong eating and thinking — deranges 
nutrition ; and while the constitutional derangement of all 
may be alike, each individual will develop a disease pecu- 
liarly in keeping with his anatomical construction. 

Anatomical predisposition will not cause a given dis- 
ease to develop. The individual construction only directs 
the specialization or localization of disease. The building 
of disease is left to influences that break down natural 
immunization and allow the development of autotoxemia 
— the constitutional derangement from which all the dis- 
eases known to nosology differentiate (specialize). 

It is said that tuberculosis is inherited. What is 
heredity? The average opinion of heredity is crude in- 
deed. It is generally thought that disease is a direct 



Tuberculosis 117 

transmission ; that tuberculosis is transmitted from sire to 
son ; that the germs of disease in the sire are passed over, 
at the time of conception, to the son. This is absurd, and 
makes of creation or creator a monstrous nemesis that de- 
lights in destruction ; whereas just exactly the opposite is 
true. Creator or creation is a building-up process; the 
tendency is to perfection; and when the child is not an 
improvement on the parents, it is because the environment 
given the child is more obstructive to biological processes 
than the environment in which the parents were brought 
up. 

A cause of disease that is not consistent with every 
other cause — for instance, the cause of growth and decay, 
of joy and despair, of love and hate, of calm and storm, of 
poverty and riches, of peace and war, etc. — is not a true 
cause, and a theory of cure based on such a cause must 
fail when disease has been pushed beyond the power of 
nature to throw off. 

All false systems of cure gain their reputations for be- 
ing possessed of curing power within that great, more- 
than-three-fourths territory in which nature cures in spite 
of the hindrances of illogical cures. 

Most cures are in keeping with the old story: "Sally 
and I killed the bear." 

One of the many famous remarks of the great mental 
emancipator, Robert G. Ingersoll, was that, if he had the 
making of disease and health, he would have made health 
catching. Indeed, health is catching. In spite of our 
worst habits — our greatest endeavors to break all health 
laws — the subtile powers of health and life are beating 
back disease and death influences every second of time. 

Ingersoll's skepticism did not extend to medical sub- 
jects. He did not know that a belief in contagion was 
strictly in keeping with the theological absurdities that 
were subjected to his most caustic satire. In this he, like 



118 Care of Children and Mothers 

most of us, was absurdly illogical — lacking in philosoph- 
ical breadth of comprehension. 

Too many specialists give no thought as to whether 
their specialty synthetically joins all others in making a 
consistent whole. To make myself understood, I will say 
that health, disease, ethics, morality, religion, physics, and 
all other departments of human knowledge, must join in 
a consistent whole. The same laws govern all, and every 
specialty must be consistent with every other specialty. 
If it is not, it must be reorganized and made to fit logi- 
cally with the laws governing every other department of 
learning. So long as it does not, it is founded on fallacy 
and must fail. 

For tuberculosis to be hereditary, in any other sense 
than is explained by the laws of physical construction, is 
absurd; for every birth, from a physiological standpoint, 
is a regeneration, and is held down only by the slower 
process of physical evolution. 

Nature puts her eternal fiat against impure births by 
causing sterilization in those unfit to propagate. Fre- 
quently, among the submerged class, disease is developed 
after conception; and then, between disease, filth, and 
ignorance, children are born in keeping with such mental 
pictures as are presented by "Damaged Goods," and phy- 
sicians who are deluded on the subject. 

1 take pleasure in disputing the charges of impurity 
made against creation by a deluded profession. I say that 
every conception is passed upon by the laws governing 
genesis, and is fit, or it would not take place. Disease and 
unfitness are caused after this date. 

Every conception could be made a success, if nature's 
handiwork were not obstructed on every hand. 

If those who have the vital energy to live one hundred 
and twenty years are cut off by bad habits at from sixty 



Tuberculosis 119 

to seventy-five years of age, how much chance for long life 
have those with much less vitality? 

Function precedes structure, and it is structural con- 
stancy that holds us to heredity. Hence, to overcome 
hereditary influences, the body and mind must be made to 
function ideally — as nearly ideally as possible; and this 
in the course of a few generations will do away with im- 
perfect physical structure and the consequent disease in- 
fluence. Here is where mind controls physical construc- 
tion. 

When parents are physically predisposed to take on 
tuberculosis, before the disease can gain a foothold they 
must add to their predisposition habits that break down 
resistance and bring on autotoxemia ; after which glandu- 
lar infection takes place; then tubercular degeneration 
follows, with destruction of life. 

Children inherit a physical predisposition to tubercu- 
losis, and there is but one immunization; namely, avoid 
enervation and its consequence — autotoxemia. How is 
this to be done? Avoid overstimulation. 

Children of tubercular parents should be taught the 
great importance of avoiding the parents' style of living. 
Those belonging to tubercular families should reverse all 
traits and characteristics — avoid the style of eating, think- 
ing, and the usual care of the body — of their parents. Of 
course, it should be their endeavor to cultivate moderation 
in all things, so as to avoid bringing on enervation. The 
very best thing that can be done is to learn how to live in 
keeping with the system's requirements. 

Every child is born with a certain amount of resist- 
ance, which the forces of development add to more or less, 
as habits permit. This is the golden opportunity of life 
to build a large resistance to counteract heredity. But 
what do we see? No attempt to cultivate good habits, but 
quite the reverse. These children are allowed to develop 



120 Care of Children and Mothers 

vicious eating habits, which strike the first blow at the 
citadel of life. 

From wrong food combinations, irregular eating, and 
gormandizing, children develop the diseases peculiar to 
childhood. The first to manifest is enuresis nocturna — 
involuntary emptying of the bladder during sleep. This 
is a symptom of wrong doing, the same as polyuria (ex- 
cessive secretion of urine), and can be cured by correct- 
ing the feeding. When these diseases manifest, it is an 
indication of overworked organs, which, unless corrected, 
will lead to enervation, autotoxemia, and the development 
of the diseases peculiarly suited to the anatomical con- 
struction of the subjects. 

The theory advanced by modern medical science, that 
germs are the cause of tuberculosis, favors the propaga- 
tion of this as well as other diseases, because this theory 
does not recognize heredity, except in the absurd and im- 
possible manner of transmission of disease. 

The advocates of this theory recommended gormandiz- 
ing for the purpose of keeping up the strength, and at the 
same time furnishing the germs with enough food to pre- 
vent their attacking the tissues of the body. This theory 
is so absurd that it is unworthy of this age ; but, as it is 
the accepted theory, and is backed by medical men gen- 
erally, the protests of rationalism, with its small follow- 
ing, can hardly be expected to receive much attention until 
public education demands better service from physicians. 
Then the profession will move in the line of expediency. 

Parents must become convinced that disease is simply 
health impaired by breaking health laws, and that cures 
mean the correcting of the habits of life that bring on dis- 
ease. 

The cure of tuberculosis is prevention. When nutri- 
tion has become so impaired that this disease develops, the 
return of the organism to the normal, and the re-establish- 
ing of full resistance, are almost impossible. Why? Be- 



Tuberculosis 121 

cause of the iron grip with which habit holds the victims, 
and the paralyzing fear transmitted to the majority of 
tuberculous victims by medical men. 

All children who inherit tendencies for taking on dis- 
ease should be fed regularly and put to bed early. They 
should not be allowed to cultivate an abnormal emotional 
nature. Their eating and thinking must be guided into 
normal channels. If they are not overstimulated by im- 
proper eating, they will not develop sexual precocity, with 
its train of bad mental and physical habits, which are fol- 
lowed by numerous derangements. 

Plain food at stated intervals should be habitual. 
Fancy dishes — custards, pies, puddings, candy, coffee, and 
tea — must be used as luxuries. Such food is disease- 
building when eaten often. Children inheriting a handi- 
cap should not have their appetite whetted for such food ; 
for they very quickly form bad habits ; and, if they escape 
their inheritance, it will be because they have been piloted 
away from the shoals — floundering places — where those of 
low vital force go down and out. 

City life is conducive to the development of disease. 
This life for children is very unnatural. Schools should be 
in the country, and children cared for — given a home — at 
these schools. In no other way can plain eating and right 
thinking be taught. If race-suicide is to be avoided, our 
children must be reared in the country. 

The average parent is a child-destroyer instead of a 
child-builder — a health-destroyer, not a health-builder. 
Imprudent, or unfit, eating causes children of tuberculous 
inheritance to develop, very early, enlarged tonsils, ade- 
noids, and cervical glands, for which bug-spooked doctors 
recommend operations. The average surgeon is never 
happier than when practicing vandalism on the fair neck 
of some child or young lady — ignorantly believing, or 
knavishly pretending, that it is necessary. I am proving 
the falseness of this contention daily by causing these en- 



122 Care of Children and Mothers 

largements to pass away by removing the cause of them; 
namely, wrong life. 

Operations for removing symptoms are as illogical as 
giving drugs to stop pain, and ignoring, or not even know- 
ing the cause. 

These children should be fed and cared for about as 
follows: fruit for breakfast; one of the following starchy 
foods: oatmeal mush, whole-wheat bread, rice, potatoes, 
navy or butter beans, with cooked, non-starchy vegetables 
and a salad or slaw, for the noon meal (if dinner cannot 
be had at noon, then it may be eaten in the evening) ; and 
whole-wheat bread, toasted and buttered, followed by a 
glass of milk, for noon or night, depending on when din- 
ner is eaten. Positively no feeding between meals. 

Half the day should be spent in studying nature in 
the open — in the fields and over the hills. 

Town life is too artificial. Children are underdevel- 
oped and overdeveloped. Their appetite for fun is over- 
developed. Aping and consulting precedent is overdevel- 
oped to the extent of inhibiting the growth of individu- 
ality and independent thought. 

The conventions of city life tend to stereotype and 
force a mediocre type of manhood. The average child is 
sadly neglected in the line of developing in originality — 
developing in independent and original thought. 

Wrong life, and the treatment usually given the dis- 
eases brought on by it, develop in many the sick habit. 
Treatment must be directed to correcting bad habits and 
overcoming the mental perversion. All the diseases of 
childhood are unnecessary and a disgrace to civilization. 
All are easy to cure when treated right. 

REFLEX IRRITATION 

Worms, eye-strain, indigestion, constipation, diarrhea, 
convulsions; in boys, phymosis preputium (constricted 
foreskin), and vaginal leucorrhea (whites) in girls. 



Reflex Irritations 123 

WORMS 

Intestinal worms cause symptoms similar to those of 
indigestion, if, indeed, the worms, when present, are not 
the result of indigestion; hence they become an ally to or- 
dinary causes of indigestion, and help keep up much intes- 
tinal disturbance and reflex irritations. 

The cause of worms is not clear to the medical under- 
standing. I believe that the best class of medical minds 
believes that, when the human intestine becomes the host 
of worms or any class of parasites, it is due to a depraved, 
or debilitated, state of the digestive organs. This debility 
may be brought on from many causes. There may be 
spinal enervation ; the digestive secretions may be sub- 
normal in quantity or quality, from lack of nerve energy 
or from overstimulation; because of overeating or 
improper eating; the excessive consumption of sugar, 
candy, yeast bread, butter, jam, and nuts; not properly 
cleansed dried fruit ; eating of food that has been exposed 
to flies and other insects; general lack of cleanliness; and 
too close association with dogs, cats, birds, and other 
animals. 

There has been a decided improvement in housekeep- 
ing, as well as in sanitation, during the past fifty years ; 
and, in the matter of intestinal worms, that disease has 
diminished equally with pediculi (head lice), as general 
cleanliness has improved. 

The older medical profession thought that intestinal 
parasites came from spontaneous generation, but modern 
medical science does not admit that spontaneous genera- 
tion can take place. Before the final word can be said on 
this subject, some understanding must be had as to the 
limit of metamorphosis. We must know positively 
whether the cell-life of multicellular beings metamor- 
phoses into germ or parasitic life. This idea is reason- 
able, and appears to be proved by the fact that these 
entities do not develop except when life on the upper 



124 Care of Children and Mothers 

plane has lost its innate immunizing power. The loss of 
this power is what we are referring to all the time as 
enervation, on which the theory of autotoxemia — the 
universal cause of all diseases — is predicated. 

I do not care to go into a general description of the 
many parasites that have been found in the human intes- 
tine. Those who wish to know the history and description 
of them should go to their public library, where they can 
find all they wish to know in almost any work on general 
practice of medicine. 

I do not even care to enumerate symptoms; for they 
are many and deceptive. I mean that a given sick person 
might complain of symptoms peculiar to tapeworm, yet 
have no worm. 

Treatment. — The treatment for stomach and bowel 
derangements should be such as appears to meet the 
indications. At all times take care of the eating — eat 
within digestive capacity. 

Nursing children are not liable to be troubled with 
worms. The derangements of babies can usually be cor- 
rected by cutting down the supply of food to the child's 
needs. Feed short of causing milk curds to form in the 
bowels. To do so means to reduce the intake of milk, 
and give all the water that the child can be persuaded to 
drink ; then enforce quiet, and remove all physical irrita^ 
tions. Get the idea of doctoring or treating disease out 
of the mind ; for there is never anything the matter with 
children except wrong care in feeding, and care of body 
and mind. 

Signs of stomach irritation. — It matters not how 
healthy-looking a child is, if it has a white line around 
its mouth and running up the sides of the nose, it has irri- 
tation of the stomach (not necessarily from worms) ;* its 

*This is an old sign for worms. Women — mothers and grand- 
mothers — taking their date from the middle of the last century, 
are quite sure that the white line around the mouth, thick lips, 
and picking at the nose are sure signs of worms. 



Eye-Strain 125 

tongue will be red at the end from enlarged papillae. In 
scarlet fever the end of the tongue is very red, and the 
papillae are very large. This is called the "strawberry 
tongue" of scarlet fever. It is a symptom of irritation 
of the stomach. 

Mothers who care for their children in such a way as 
to keep the signs of stomach irritation — the white line, 
exaggerated red cheeks, and more or less irritability of 
temper — need not be surprised at occasional attacks of 
gastritis, catarrh, pneumonia, and the contagious diseases. 
Many of these mothers will deny feeding between meals, 
and they will protest that they are careful about feeding 
and combining; yet convicting evidence is against them. 
I have known of a few who would not be careful until the 
unnecessary death of a child forced them to practice the 
dietetic and hygienic principles they so protestingly 
avouched. 

Unfortunately there are very few people who do not 
practice lax methods in the care of themselves and their 
children. 

EYE-STRAIN 

Eye-strain is a much-talked-of derangement of school 
children. No doubt the eye — the most delicate and most 
used organ of the body — suffers greatly from reflex irri- 
tations, and in many subjects from autotoxemia. Unless 
normal alkalinity exists, nervous irritation of all kinds 
develops. Perhaps I would better say that when the 
intake of starch and proteid foods is greater than the 
system's metabolic (digestive) power, the acid developed 
reduces the normal alkalinity of the humors of the eye. 
This alters their density, and necessarily the refraction, 
after which the pain of adjustment (eye-strain) is 
experienced. 

Treatment — For eye-strain, children throughout the 
entire country are fitted with glasses. The prescription 
for every conceivable ailment of the nervous child is 



126 Care of Children and Mothers 

glasses; for the disease is eye-strain. This is a fad, the 
same as operating for the removal of the tonsils for sore 
throat, and the removal of the appendix in every case of 
pain in the bowels. 

Correct the child's habits of life. Stop its eating 
between meals. If the child is very nervous, send it to 
bed, and give fruit for one meal, a salad for another, and 
toasted biead (yeastless) and a glass of milk for the third 
meal. If rapid progress is desired, limit the food, and 
keep the child extra quiet by not allowing anyone to visit 
it or to be with it, except the mother or nurse. 

A warm bath may be given every other night. Keep 
the child out of school until fully restored. When nerv- 
ousness is controlled, and it is no longer necessary to keep 
the child in bed, its eating should be : 

Breakfast: two mornings a week, oatmeal porridge 
and milk; two mornings a week, well-made biscuits, but- 
ter, honey, and a glass of milk ; the biscuit should be made 
of half whole-wheat and half white flour ; two mornings a 
week, cooked rice or puffed rice, butter, and follow with 
milk; Sunday morning, fruit, cooked or raw, followed 
with milk. 

Lunches for Sunday: toasted bread and milk; or, if 
the family has dinner at noon, the bread and milk may be 
eaten at night for supper. 

For lunches during the heat of summer: two lunches 
a week of sponge or plain cake, ice-cream, and a glass of 
milk; two lunches a week of fruit, cottage or cream 
cheese, and milk; the two remaining lunches of apple, cus- 
tard, or berry pie, cheese, and milk ; or fruit, cup custard, 
cottage cheese, and milk; or ginger bread, two or three 
ounces of caramels, chocolates, or cream candy, followed 
with wilk. 

Dinners: baked or broiled fish twice a week; two 
cooked, non-starchy vegetables, and a salad of lettuce, 
tomatoes, and cucumbers in summer, and celery in place 



Catarrhal Habit 127 

of tomatoes in winter ; dress with salt, olive oil, and lemon 
juice; in the summer, a dish of berries for dessert. 

To prevent building of the autotoxemic state that 
brought on eye-strain, avoid having more than one of the 
following items in one day: eggs, meat, cheese, nuts, fish, 
baked beans, and potatoes. Indeed, animal food given 
every other day is as often as children should eat it. The 
alternate days, for dinner, baked potatoes, baked beans, 
macaroni and cheese, or corn bread, with combination 
salad, one or two cooked, non-starchy vegetables. Or the 
three meals may be selected as follows: oatmeal and milk 
for breakfast; ice-cream, berries, and milk for lunch; a 
combination salad with a hard-boiled egg (or, in place of 
the egg, add twenty to thirty half-meats of the pecan, or 
twelve to fifteen walnut half-meats), two cooked, non- 
starchy vegetables, and a dish of berries as dessert, for 
dinner. 

It should not be forgotten that the animal and veg- 
etable albuminoid foods, when eaten beyond the digestive 
and assimilative powers of the body, cause enervation and 
autotoxemia. As a result, any disease for which there is 
a natural tendency may develop. 

Catarrhal conjunctivitis is the most common inflam- 
matory disease of the eye. It is, strictly speaking, acute 
catarrhal inflammation of the lining membrane of the 
eyelids and external covering of the eyeball. 

The catarrhal habit will be peculiar to all children 
who have conjunctivitis. And what is the catarrhal habit? 
A sensitive state of the mucous membrane, caused by 
sugar-eating and the acid of fermentation from too much 
starch-eating. The normal secretion of the mucous mem- 
brane is alkaline. When the alkalinity is reduced be- 
cause of absorption of the acid of fermentation, the 
self-protecting power of the membrane is lost. Then it 
is that cold air, dust, or any foreign particles floating 
in the air, cause irritation of the mucous membrane of 



128 Care of Children and Mothers 

the eye, nose, throat, and lungs; then it is that fruits 
that are sharply acid, or bolted foods, irritate the mucous 
membrane of the stomach and bowels; then it is that eat- 
ing improperly combined foods, overeating, eating too 
many sweets, and constipation, cause indigestion (fermen- 
tation), and absorption of the acid, which further reduces 
the normal alkalinity of the fluids of the body, and favors 
inflammatory diseases. 

When the secretions are pronouncedly acid, they cause 
so much irritation of the mucous membrane that a mueor- 
rhea develops, which corresponds in purpose with all 
fluxes. Colds, with heavy discharge from the nose, are a 
type of mucorrhea. To overcome the acidity, the blood in 
the capillary blood-vessels of the surface of the body is 
rushed to the mucous membrane, and the serum of the 
blood is thrown out. This serum, being alkaline, neu- 
tralizes the acid secretions, preventing their absorption, 
and in this way relieves the congestion and inflammation. 
Where this process is extremely active, there is a great 
pouring-out of what is called the serum of the blood. This 
effort on the part of nature is palliative. When doctors 
give alkaline drugs, they palliate. But to cure means the 
removal of cause, which is to correct the eating, and give 
enough rest to quiet down the general as well as the local 
nervous irritations. 

INDIGESTION 

Indigestion may be the result of reflex irritation 
brought on by the excitement of noise, heat, glare of a 
bright sun, lack of rest, not enough sleep, and the effects 
of fear, or any influence affecting the emotional nature. 

Treatment. — Feeding has not much to do with it. 
Correct the irritation, whatever it is, and the child will 
soon be well. 



Constipation 129 

constipation 
Sluggish and constipated bowels are often a symptom 
of nervous irritation, the same as indigestion. 
Treatment. — Find the cause, and remove it. 

DIARRHEA 

A running-off of the bowels is often caused by fear. 
Children should not be told scary stories, left in a dark 
room for a bugger-man to catch, etc., etc. 

Treatment. — Stop frightening the child, and overcome 
all fear in its nature. 

CONVULSIONS 

Fits have been brought on by fear, injury, phymosis, 
constipation, and many other causes. 

Treatment. — Correct the causes of fear. Phymosis 
must be overcome by dilation or operation. 

PHYMOSIS 

Tight prepuce must be gradually dilated, and, if the 
foreskin adheres, it must be pulled, pushed with the fin- 
gers, or peeled off by a probe, small sound, or grooved 
director. The operation hurts a little, but nothing should 
be used to deaden sensation. It is not necessary to try to 
overcome the trouble at one treatment. If necessary, 
manipulate carefully for a dozen times, making a little 
progress each time. Extreme cleanliness of hands, and 
whatever instrument is being used, is imperative. 

VAGINITIS AND VULVITIS 

Inflammation of the vagina and vulva comes from 
acidity, the result of sugar- and candy-eating. Cakes, 
cookies, preserves, and jelly-eating with bread, also pas- 
try-, custard-, and pudding-eating, create intestinal fer- 
mentation. The acid absorbed reduces the systemic alka- 
linity, which changes the alkaline secretions of mucous 



130 Care op Children and Mothers 

membranes to acid. In children where this condition has 
been developed and running over a considerable length of 
time, ulceration takes place in both boys and girls. The 
discharge from the vagina in girls, and the discharge 
from underneath the foreskin in boys, often becomes puru- 
lent. 

Treatment. — Cleanliness and the elimination of sweets 
of all kinds will soon cure these cases. 

The eating must be corrected, and a weak alkaline 
douche should be given with a fountain syringe, using the 
smallest rectal tube, or a small catheter attached to the 
rectal tube. The douche should be a heaping teaspoonful 
of baking-soda to one quart of water. 

CATARRHAL CONJUNCTIVITIS 

The inflammation of the lining membrane of the eye- 
lids and globe of the eye is known as "catarrhal conjunc- 
tivitis." No child will have this disease unless it has 
catarrh — unless it is enervated and autotoxemic. 

Symptoms. — The first symptom is a sensation of dry- 
ness and smarting, as if a foreign body had got into the 
eye. Swelling follows, and soon an abundant secretion of 
water; then mucus, and lastly muco-pus, is established. 
Where the patients are fed and medicated, the suffering is 
great and the disease prolonged. 

Treatment. — The treatment should be perfect cleanli- 
ness. The eye should be bathed in hot water for several 
minutes at a time; then follow immediately with cold 
water and salt — a teaspoonful of salt to the pint of cold 
water. Keep the child quiet and without food until the 
acute inflammation subsides; then allow fruit and combi- 
nation salad until the eyes are well. The child should 
then eat as recommended for those recovering from eye- 
strain. 



Gastric Fever 131 

Chronic conjunctivitis is hard to cure, and should be 
treated by skilled oculists. If, however, the patient is put 
on a rigid diet and properly cared for, a six to twelve 
months' regular requirement for a cure may be cut down 
to sixty or ninety days. 

Drug treatment is very unsatisfactory, and there is 
no more need of a resort to such treatment in this dis- 
ease than there is in any other. 

Gentle rubbing of the granular membrane of the eye- 
lids with a glass rod made for the purpose is the only local 
treatment necessary, except frequent bathing with warm 
water. A fast of sufficient duration to rid the intestine 
of decomposition should be taken; then the eating should 
be very light until well : fruit for one meal, salad for an- 
other, and toasted bread and milk for another. 

GASTRIC FEVER 

Irritation and inflammation of the stomach are 
brought on by frequent eating, overeating, and imprudent 
eating. 

A gastric fever starts with vomiting of undigested 
food. The tongue is red and the breath pungent — some- 
times called the "ether breath." 

Treatment.— Begin treatment by washing out the 
bowels with enemas; no food, not even water, until the 
nausea is gone. When there is an epidemic influence, 
gastric fever precedes tonsilitis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, 
typhoid fever, measles, and other diseases; showing the 
oneness of all diseases. 

A simple gastric fever ends in two oi* three days; a 
tonsilitis, in a week ; a diphtheria or scarlet fever requires 
weeks, depending upon the amount of septic poisoning 
developed from maltreatment, medical and nursing. Gas- 
tric fever plus septic poisoning spells diphtheria or scarlet 
fever. The last two diseases are one and the same, except 



132 Care op Children and Mothers 

that the scarlet fever has a skin complication that diph- 
theria does not have. 

These diseases follow epidemic influences made specific 
by festival days and habitual gastric abuse. 

ENERVATION 

Enervation in children may be assumed to exist if 
the breath has a slightly pungent odor, or an odor of 
ether — either indicates irritation of the stomach. A 
slightly septic breath, or a putrescent breath, indicates 
decomposition in the stomach, sore throat, perhaps ton- 
silitis or quinsy, and maybe diphtheria. If the breath 
is odorous every morning, but the odor leaves after 
breakfast, not to be detected until morning again, it is a 
sign of irritation of the stomach due to too frequent eat- 
ing, candy-eating, and wrong food combinations practiced 
until the child is enervated and has lost its power of 
resistance. 

When the breath is bad and the child is irritable, hard 
to please, and possessed of a capricious appetite, it should 
be sent to bed, and kept in bed until all the abnormal 
symptoms are gone. If the bowels do not move well — if 
there is constipation — enemas of warm water should be 
given, daily, often enough to secure a thorough movement. 
If the bowels move without assistance, then the enemas 
need not be used. 

No food should be given. It matters not what the 
disease is — positively no food should be given when a 
child is sick. When children are sent to bed for being 
cross and irritable, they may have an orangeade or a 
lemonade. The orange is to be prepared without sugar; 
the lemon drink may be made with a teaspoonful of sugar 
to the half-lemon. 

Children will not be sick without a cause; and the 
cause, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, is based on 
overeating, or errors in diet. It is true that children 



Enervation 133 

often play too hard, and become overwrought emotionally. 
Many are made nervous through fear. The old ignorance 
of teaching children to fear the dark, the bogy-man, the 
devil, etc., caused much unnecessary sickness. 

Fear and excitement bring on enervation, cause nerv- 
ousness, and weaken the digestive function. Parents 
should be wise enough to adjust the child's eating to the 
varying demands. 

A tired child — one so tired that it is irritable — should 
not be fed until rested. A perfectly healthy child, when 
tired — very tired — will sleep; it will sleep standing, if it 
cannot lie down; it will sleep sitting; it will sleep with 
bread and butter, or other food, in its hands, and even 
while eating; showing that nature places sleep before 
eating. The child that cries with pain in its legs, and is 
so nervous w T hen tired — after a day of excitement and 
play — that it cannot sleep, and, when it does sleep, moans, 
tosses, and kicks the covering off, has indigestion, and is 
troubled daily with stomach acidity and more or less 
constipation. The acid state causes the rheumatism which 
is erroneously called growing pains. The acidity comes 
from fermentation of food in the stomach. The gas that 
is subconsciously being eructated from a stomach that is 
forced to take on more food than it can digest, or food 
that is improperly prepared, or improperly combined, will, 
in time, create chronic irritation of the throat. This 
irritableness of the throat furnishes a splendid culture 
medium for all sorts of germs. Children with such a 
throat development are susceptible to the catching of 
colds; they develop tonsilitis often; indeed, they develop 
chronic tonsilitis with enlargement. These are the chil- 
dren who develop adenoids and mouth-breathing, and later 
inflammatory rheumatism, tuberculosis, etc. 

When children develop along these lines to a marked 
degree, they are said to be catarrhal, and formerly were 
said to be scrofulous. Today, when the glands of the 



134 Care of Children and Mothers 

neck are enlarged, doctors diagnose the lymphatic enlarge- 
ment as tuberculosis — tubercular glands — and commonly 
recommend their removal with the knife. 

A COMMON DYSCRASIA 

The description given above should be recognized as a 
common dyscrasia, admitting the grafting, so to speak, of 
any and all diseases. There is a general belief in predis- 
position to take on diseases. This should be understood 
as meaning peculiarities of anatomical construction and 
habit- transmission. 

Once for all it should be understood that disease is not 
transmitted — inherited. Only, there is a tendency to take 
on certain diseases when resistance — natural immuniza- 
tion — is broken down by the establishment of the dyscra- 
sia hereinbefore described. 

I do not wish my readers to use the commonly under- 
stood meaning of the word "dyscrasia," but to think of 
the meaning I give; namely, a general derangement such 
as I have described above, and such as the word "enerva- 
tion" describes. It means lost power to stay well. Chil- 
dren may be in this state, and pass as in ordinary health, 
and excite no special notice from mother, teacher, or even 
doctor, unless the latter happens to be school inspector; 
then he may find adenoids, enlarged tonsils, or eye-strain ; 
all of which will mean surgical operations and eyeglasses. 
Most medical men of this class willsee nothing behind the 
adenoids, enlarged tonsils, and eye derangements. Each 
of these diseases will be treated as a cause, and when the 
doctor succeeds in having it removed, he congratulates the 
parents on the cure of their children. 

ENLARGED TONSILS 

These doctors and their teachers promulgate the doc- 
trine that enlarged tonsils are open doors for the passage 
of germs into the system; that this is the way the germs 



Enlarged Tonsils 135 

of rheumatism enter the blood! The real facts are that 
the enlarged tonsil is a veritable fortification, built to pre- 
vent absorption of the gases which, as stated before, are 
eructating and keeping the throat irritable. All indura- 
tions are for the prevention of absorption, or to protect 
against chafing or rubbing. 

Any chronic inflammation is accompanied by conges- 
tion — excessive blood supply. This, in turn, is always ac- 
companied by hyperplasia (increased tissue formation) 
and hypertrophy (increase in size or enlargement of or- 
gans). When a gland is chronically enlarged, the circula- 
tion through it is more or less impeded, and absorption is 
very imperfect, if it takes place at all. Where the circula- 
tion is impeded very greatly in an enlarged gland or other 
tissue of the body, the oxygen is cut off, and death or 
necrosis of the tissue takes place. It is then we say of a 
tonsil in this state: "The tonsil or tonsils are ulcerat- 
ing." 

Tonsilitis is an inflammation of the tonsils and throat 
caused by decomposition in the stomach and bowels. 

Gas rising in the throat from fermentation causes irri- 
tation. Where this irritation is continuous, day after 
day, there is developed a sensitive state, characterized by 
redness and more or less thickening of the mucous mem- 
brane and enlargement of the tonsils. Periodically the 
daily condition of stomach fermentation takes on a putre- 
faction. Then it is said that the patient has an attack of 
tonsilitis or quinsy. If conditions are favorable, a diph- 
theria or scarlet fever may develop. 

The treatment between attacks must be directed 
toward overcoming the chronic fermentation of the stom- 
ach. Correct eating and the proper care of the body will 
soon do away with tonsilitis without operation. 

Children with the developed dyscrasia, as I said be- 
fore, may pass as of normal health. Mothers know so 



136 Care of Children and Mothers 

little of ideal health that they are heard to say, when 
asked about their children: "Jamie is real well, except 
his adenoids. Johnnie's health is fine, but I cannot break 
him of soaking the bed every night. Estella is never sick, 
but she has the bad habit of rubbing and scratching her 
genitalia, and I notice of late a vaginal discharge, which 
would worry me if she were not so splendidly well." 

ADENOIDS 

Adenoids are small mushroom growths, very watery, 
pink or reddish in color, and develop in the nasal passage. 

They are described by medical writers as "masses that 
obstruct breathing and excite and maintain a catarrhal 
state of the membranes of the nose and pharynx." This 
is placing the cart before the horse. Adenoids are the re- 
sult of the excited and catarrhal state of those parts, 
caused by wrong eating. 

Wrong eating brings on food poisoning. First fer- 
mentation; then, resulting from gas eructations, we have 
first irritation of the throat, then inflammation of throat 
and nose. This is what we call catarrh. After which, as 
a legitimate sequence, we have enlarged tonsils, adenoids, 
ulcerations in the nose, enlarged, thickened membranes, 
growths, and bony spurs. The eustachian tubes and the 
ears become catarrhal. 

All the diseases of the throat, nose, and head originate 
from deranged digestion, and will never be cured until the 
indigestion is cured. 

Should adenoids be removed? Why should they? 
Adenoids do not cause themselves; hence removing them 
will not prevent others from forming. 

To cure adenoids, remove the cause; which means: 
feed and cloth children properly. 



Contagious Diseases 137 

CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 

Children with the dyscrasia I have described well de- 
veloped are in line for developing all the so-called con- 
tagious diseases. Why? Because they have the dyscrasia 
— the systemic derangement, the lost resistance — that 
makes them favorable culture media for all germs. Un- 
usual weather — hot, dry, wet, or cold — works distress to 
broken-down people, and to children with lost resistance. 
When atmospheric states favoring decomposition remain 
in a section of country for an unusual period, so-called 
infectious and contagious diseases make their appearance. 
At first those with the least resistance break down, devel- 
oping measles, smallpox, chicken-pox, whooping-cough, 
mumps, diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, pneu- 
monia, infantile paralysis, etc. Then, if the epidemic influ- 
ence lasts, and fear, with vaccination, be added, those 
with impaired resistance will give down. Next, if the un- 
favorable weather conditions remain and the community 
becomes panic-stricken, prostrations may be expected 
among those who had full resistance at the beginning. 
Fear is the greatest ally that disease influence has. Fear, 
per se ? cannot cause cholera or smallpox, but, through 
fear, resistance is broken ; then the daily habits that were 
innocent at the beginning of the epidemic, and under 
which the body throve, now become noxious and join the 
epidemic influence to prostrate, and perhaps kill, the vic- 
tim; verifying the misunderstood, but oft-repeated, state- 
ment that the mind kills. The mind really makes it pos- 
sible for some people to take sick and die of diseases they 
had no inclination to take before fear broke down resist- 
ance. Fear, which is a mental process, inhibits secretions 
and excretions. The patient then becomes autotoxemic, 
resistance gives way, the epidemic influence joins the other 
causes, and down goes the victim. 



138 Care of Children and Mothers 

In spite of all I have said about the causes of prepared- 
ness; the epidemic-producing influences, and fear acting 
with them, causing the most resistant to succumb to epi- 
demic diseases, there will be readers who will ask: 
"Don't you believe in contagion? Don't you believe that 
disease is taken by coming in contact with someone suf- 
fering from it?" 

I have stated my whole belief, and feel confident that 
anyone, if he carefully tries it out and is capable of doing 
so, will, when through, believe as I do. 

If I am right, there is no excuse for vaccination; for, 
if it does anything, it dissipates nerve energy. There is 
no need of health boards stirring up fear; indeed, the 
periodic endemics of fright emanating from health boards 
should be recognized as disease-producing, and the boards 
should be fined to the extent of the law, and their fright- 
generators taken from them. 

School is another ally of disease. Children are con- 
fined, and mentally taxed, either in study of lessons or in 
studying how to get out of study. It matters not how the 
mind is employed — it is an artificial state, and absolutely 
in opposition to all animal inclination and instinct. 

Our school system is getting better, but it is not ideal. 
The mind, like the body, should assimilate the food. Food 
is given the body, and that ends it. The body takes care 
of it according to the functions of the organs of the body. 
Not so with the mind. Food is given the mind, and then 
a pudding-headed censor directs the mental digestion. 
The plan is good for nationalizing, stereotyping, and mak- 
ing automatons of all mankind ; but it is not the best for 
bringing out individuality and securing all the brain 
power of the people. Besides, the mental censoring in- 
terferes with bodily health and development. 

The vacation season is the only time when children 
have an opportunity to throw off disease in a natural way. 



Contagious Diseases 139 

But the time is too short for full recovery, even if they 
were directed in their eating and other habits. The sun- 
shine, fresh air, and exercise they get during vacation im- 
prove them in spite of bad family habits. But when they 
start into school, bad air, inactivity, the worry of inatten- 
tion — inability to concentrate the mind — and consequent 
disgrace of failing in recitation ; perhaps a sore arm from 
vaccination, or the unwholesome atmosphere created by 
other vaccinated arms; dread of operation for adenoids or 
enlarged tonsils, or the pain of straightening teeth; the 
nervousness caused by music lessons, and the inharmony 
coming from piano practice; and a lot of other influences 
that must come to most school girls and boys, soon lower 
their resistance; and then improper eating works more 
hardship than in the summer, when their bodies and 
minds were free. If parents are advised to feed more 
carefully, they will show their ignorance by declaring that 
they ate much more in the summer, and it did not "phaze" 
them. 

Many people go for an outing; they climb hills and 
mountains ; they stay out in the air almost day and night ; 
and they return home fully convinced that there is noth- 
ing in diet schemes, for they have proved positively that 
food does not disagree with them. They continue their 
eating, but the rest of their outing habits are given up 
until another outing. In a week, two weeks, or a month 
they are down and out; they have lost all they gained, and 
are in shape to talk about getting "back to nature" — 
going into the chicken business, or farming, or fruit-rais- 
ing. The burden of their daj^-dreaming is that their busi- 
ness is unsuitable to them; they are losing their health by 
staying with an unsuitable business. Most of such people 
would get well and make a success of life if they could be 
shown that they are held down by bad habits only — bad 
habits of mind and bodv. 



140 Care op Children and Mothers 

Within one to four weeks after school begins nearly 
all the pupils have had one or more colds and more or less 
cough. Relish for food is not so good; the desire is un- 
certain and capricious; perhaps bread and butter can be 
coaxed down with jelly or fruit butter; oatmeal can be 
eaten if sugared ; the desire for pie, cake, and candy is full 
enough, but plain food is an abomination. 

The type here described is nervous, irritable, and impa- 
tient ; perhaps will have a spell of gastric fever every sixty 
to ninety days ; coughs come and go ; the throat is a little 
sore often, and very sore two or three times during the 
school year. 

What is to be done? How shall the various diseases 
referred to be treated ? There is one thing that stands out 
as a remedy for all diseases; namely, remove the cause. 
But you mothers with sick boys may say: "It is well to 
stop the cause, but the cause, just at present, is succeeded 
by a very disagreeable and undesirable effect. Tell us 
how to get rid of it." 

MEASLES 

Measles is one of the so-called contagious diseases 
When a child is exposed to another that has the disease, 
it will take it in a certain length of time — eight to four- 
teen days after exposure. 

Symptoms. — It begins with many of the symptoms of a 
common cold. The eyes are red and watering; there is 
sneezing, coughing, more or less headache; rash begins to 
appear on the neck, in the arm-pits, in the tender part of 
the elbow joint in front, on the abdomen, under the sur- 
face of the legs, and on the inner part of the thighs; and 
if the disease is not delayed in coming out, the patient 
should be covered with rash in from twenty-four to sev- 
enty-two hours after it starts to come out. The rash is 
not like that of scarlet fever, because it appears to be 
somewhat elevated. The scarlet-fever rash is a redness of 



Measles 141 

the skin without seeming tumefaction, but in measles the 
skin becomes rather rough. There is always a cough, 
and often it is very harassing, showing more or less irri- 
tation of the bronchial tubes, caused by a tendency for the 
rash to show itself on the lining membranes of the tubes. 

Where there is a failure of the rash to come out on the 
surface of the body, it is not uncommon for the lungs to 
suffer vicariously for the surface of the body. They be- 
come stopped up, causing difficult breathing and a harass- 
ing cough. Unless the disease is relieved, there is 
great danger of the patient dying from suffocation. 
Sometimes the bowels suffer vicariously. Then a diar- 
rhea will start up in those cases where the rash does not 
come to the surface, or where the rash recedes. This is 
not looked upon as an insignificant symptom ; indeed, it is 
looked upon as rather dangerous, and unless the patient is 
handled correctly — properly nursed — the disease may end 
fatally. 

Measles frequently leaves the subject with chronic in- 
flammation of the eyelids — chronic conjunctivitis. 

It is pretty generally thought to be one of the minor 
diseases of childhood; yet mortality reports show a con- 
tinual loss of twenty-five per cent in large cities. This 
fact, and the further fact that measles is very much 
more common than diphtheria or scarlet fever, cause the 
death-rate from the former disease to be higher than that 
of the latter, even when these are acting in epidemic form. 
The reason why measles is so fatal is because of maltreat- 
ment. Sometimes there is a strong tendency on the part 
of the physician to give the child relief from the harass- 
ing cough. To do so, a very litle opium or morphine may 
be used. This drug acts badly upon the lungs, creating 
engorgement. It relieves the cough, but often does so at 
the expense of life. 



142 Care of Children and Mothers 

Treatment. — The treatment for this disease should be 
conducted about as follows: The child should be kept in 
bed and not allowed any food at all. It should be given 
all the water it wants, either hot or cold. If there is 
much cough — if the lungs show any tendency to become 
engorged — the child should be put into a hot bath, kept 
there for fifteen to twenty minutes, and then put to bed, 
with enough covering to keep from chilling. The bath 
should be repeated every two or three hours until the 
lungs are fully relieved. 

The bowels should be moved by enemas. The room 
should be kept well ventilated, and not darkened, as is 
common in such cases. There should not be a direct light 
shining in the patient's eyes. If possible, the patient's 
bed should head toward the w r indow. Direct light will 
irritate the eyes. 

There should not be one per cent mortality when chil- 
dren are nursed in this way. They need no drugs; they 
need absolutely nothing except water and an occasional 
hot bath. Children should be given all the water they 
wish, and kept quiet. Hot or cold water at pleasure. 

Feeding complicates and intensifies all acute diseases. 

GERMAN MEASLES 

There is a form of measles described as "German 
measles." The disease begins about the same as common 
measles. 

Symptoms. — Chilliness, increase in temperature, water- 
ing eyes, and very little, if any, cough, which is contrary 
to the common measles. Some children complain of bones 
aching. The rash first appears on the face and chest, 
then goes over the entire body. It need be treated no dif- 
ferently from ordinary measles; for it is simply a little 
variation from the regular type. 






Smallpox 143 

smallpox 

This disease comes on suddenly, sometimes accom- 
panied by a chill and a high fever, with a great deal of 
restlessness in young children. Older children will com- 
plain of pain in the bones. It is called the "break-bone 
fever/' which would indicate that the bones ache. Very 
young children are sometimes thrown into convulsions. 
Those old enough will complain of intense pain in the 
back, head, and legs, and there is usually vomiting. A 
rash appears on the skin, which may be mistaken for scar- 
let fever or measles ; but soon there will be a feeling under 
the skin as though bird-shot had been placed there. These 
little elevations, which can be felt at first before they can 
be seen, are characteristic of smallpox. 

Treatment — The treatment for this disease need not 
be any different from that of other contagious diseases. 
Keep the child comfortable, bathe when necessary, see 
that the bowels move, and give no food. 

CHICKEN-POX 

This disease is sometimes mistaken for smallpox, and 
light smallpox is sometimes called chicken-pox. There is 
no difference except in degree. Chicken-pox will some- 
times throw out not more than a half-dozen or a dozen 
pustules on the body, and then again there may be a hun- 
dred or more. Children feel bad at the beginning, but in 
a day or two there is nothing to show for the disease, ex- 
cept the little pustules that will develop on the surface of 
the body. 

Treatment. — If the child is sick in any way, it should 
be treated as all children should be treated when uncom- 
fortable; namely: stop eating, or give very light meals, or 
simply give fruit for a time. Babies in arms should be 
made comfortable, given no food when feeling uncomfort- 
able, and then, when fed, they should be given their regu- 
lation food in smaller quantities than usual. 

10 



144 Care op Children and Mothers 

whooping-cough 

Description. — This disease begins like an ordinary 
cough of irritation of the throat, growing a little more 
severe each day, until at the end of two weeks the child 
begins to whoop. The whooping lasts about two weeks, 
and then it requires about two weeks for the cough to die 
down and cease entirely. In other words, whooping- 
cough is self-limited to six weeks from beginning to end. 
During the whooping stage children frequently vomit; bad 
cases will throw up nearly all the food they eat, and be- 
come very emaciated. Such cases are marked by a high 
blood pressure. 

Etiology. — The cause of this disease is said to be an 
infection. It is recognized as being contagious and in- 
fectious. This disease, like infantile paralysis, is of the 
cerebrospinal center, or purely a disease of the nervous 
system. Where children have been overfed, autotoxemic, 
and in a condition of plethora, the symptoms will be very 
severe. The child will lose so much sleep, and become so 
worn out by coughing, that parents demand relief; and 
too many doctors are willing to give such cases a question- 
able relief. 

Treatment. — Under no circumstances should children 
be given narcotics of any kind for relief. Whenever a 
child is coughing severely, and appears to have symptoms 
of deranged digestion, slight increase in temperature, and 
high blood pressure, it should be fasted until these symp- 
toms are all gone. Drugs of any kind are not to be 
thought of. Cough mixtures will only disturb digestion 
and cause more coughing. When there is no fever, and 
the pulse appears to be about normal, except right at a 
coughing paroxysm, children at the breast should be fed 
three times a day. If the stomach becomes disturbed and 
the bowels act abnormally, reduce the food to one-half; 
but if there is an increase in temperature, the head seems 



Whooping-Cough 145 

to be congested, and the child has the appearance of being 
quite sick, positively no nourishment at all should be 
given until all these symptoms have passed away. Then 
resume the feeding to which the child has been accus- 
tomed, but do not give more than half as much as before 
it was taken with the cough. 

Older children, when presenting symptoms of stomach 
derangement, lung engorgement, congestion of the brain, 
or high blood pressure, should be fasted until all these 
symptoms have passed away. Then give a glass of butter- 
milk morning, noon, and night; or buttermilk morning 
and evening, and some kind of fresh fruit — a good eating- 
apple, or any kind of fresh fruit on the market — at noon. 

During the whooping stage children should not have 
anything to eat beyond a little fruit, or a very small 
amount of milk — never more than a glassful at a meal. 

If care is exercised in feeding these children, they will 
have what might be called a comfortable sickness. In 
other words, the cough will not distress them a very great 
deal. When whooping-cough is very distressing, it al- 
ways means that the child is sick and is being fed in a 
way to cause much discomfort. 

The mortality from whooping-cough in our large cities 
is criminally high. There is no need of any deaths from 
whooping-cough ; malpractice is the cause of all mortality. 
It comes from feeding and medicating. If mothers could 
realize that they remove all danger and much discomfort 
by fasting their children ill with this disease, they would 
have a plan of treatment that would free them from 
jeopardizing the health of their children by giving drugs. 

MUMPS 

This disease starts with the child feeling irritable, 
perhaps feverish, and complaining of headache. The 
diagnostic symptom is a swelling under the ear; for 
mumps is inflammation of the parotid gland. 



146 Care of Children and Mothers 

When children have convulsions and a high tempera- 
ture with this disease, it shows a deranged condition of 
the system from improper feeding, and the only treatment 
required is to stop giving food until the child is comfort- 
able. Then allow children at the breast to nurse about 
one-half as long as they are in the habit of nursing. Older 
children may have toasted bread and milk, morning, noon, 
and night ; but they must be comfortable, or they are not 
to eat anything. 

diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, and 
pheumonia in children 

Treatment for diseases named. — If there be pain and 
fever, put the child in a hot bath, and keep it there until 
comfortable. Use enemas daily until the temperature is 
normal and the pain gone. Keep the child quiet in bed, 
without books, papers, or friends to talk with. Kemember 
that rest is one of the greatest restorers which nature of- 
fers, and that water, outside and inside of the body, is an- 
other. When there is no nausea or vomiting, patients may 
have all the water they want ; and when there is pain or 
restlessness, hot baths frequently enough to bring comfort 
— as often as every three hours, if necessary. The length 
of time spent in the bath should be in keeping with the 
pain. The rule should be : Stay in the bath until comfort- 
able, even if forty or sixty minutes are necessary. 

If there is an inclination to cold feet, the rule should 
always be: Keep a hot jug in the foot of the bed. A 
gentle rubbing up and down the spine for ten minutes at 
bedtime w T ill usually quiet and put these patients to 
sleep. 

Someone will ask, after reading the above: "How do 
you treat typhoid fever?" In the same way. Then still 
another will inquire: "How do you treat appendicitis?" 
In the same way. Then all will probably declare: "That 
settles it! A doctor who does not know that there is a 



Colitis 147 

separate cause for every disease, requiring a special 
remedy, does not know enough to treat my family." My 
rejoinder is : Only nature cures, and all a physician can 
do is to palliate ; and all he should do is to be quite sure 
that his palliatives do not add to the disease, rather than 
ameliorate suffering. 

Perhaps it may be as well to say that all diseases 
must be treated properly from the start to the finish, if 
ideal results are to be had. Those who will follow my 
instructions, yet give a little milk or a little broth — not 
enough to amount to anything — need not be disappointed 
if they fail to secure results such as I get. The world is 
full of people who are near-successes. They miss the goal 
they start for by an insignificant margin. They follow 
instructions to an insignificant margin. They know how 
to do everything, but they fall short of doing it by such 
a small margin that it is not worth mentioning. They 
wind up their lives and miss having success by an insig- 
nificant margin, but just enough to miss it. 

Anyone who wishes to meet with the results I get in 
practice must do all I do — not pretty near what I do. 

COLITIS 

(inflammation op the colon) 

Probably constipation has more to do with bringing 
about colitis and appendicitis than any other one cause. 

Habitual constipation causes irritation first; then 
comes inflammation; following which, sooner or later, 
ulceration develops. One persistent sign is a continuous 
discharge of mucus with every bowel movement. 

The acute stage of colitis is called dysentery. Acute 
colitis, or ileo-colitis, is marked by a frequent desire to 
go to stool, but no movement. 

The real cause is constipation. As soon as the bowels 
are thoroughly cleared out, the constant desire to stool 
and the pain of bearing down are over with. 



148 Care op Children and Mothers 

Treatment. — Copious enemas. Positively no food 
until the disease is fully controlled. 

Feeding should be light to start with. For very young 
children : their usual food, but in greatly reduced quanti- 
ties, and gradually increased as toleration and digestion 
improve. 

Older children are to be fed fruit, cooked or fresh, for 
one or two days ; then fruit for one meal, toast or break- 
fast food for lunch, and broth, with grapefruit or salad, 
in the evening. If all goes well, increase on customary 
lines, being careful not to overfeed. 

One meal of laxative foods, such as prunes or figs. 
At dinner, cooked spinach or onions. 

APPENDICITIS 

Appendicitis has overeating and constipation as its 
two principal causes. 

Symptoms. — Pain in the right lower abdomen ; nausea, 
vomiting, and unyielding constipation. That is, after the 
bowel below the point involved in inflammation, swelling, 
and obstruction is cleared out by enemas, there wdll be 
no more movements until the swelling subsides and the 
sensitiveness is gone. The on-guard state of the muscles 
in this part will keep the bowels from moving until the 
sensitiveness is gone; then relaxation comes, and with it 
the bowels move freely. 

If the disease is properly treated from the beginning, 
there is no danger and but little suffering. 

Anyone who wishes to have my success in treating an 
appendicitis case must do as I do. I do not feed in 
appendicitis. And that does not mean that I give the 
patient occasionally a sip of milk, or a little fruit juice, or 
a taste of ice-cream, or little lumps of ice to cool the 
stomach. It does not mean that I am digging into his 
belly with my fingers, and allowing doctor friends to do 
the same in an endeavor to verify the diagnosis, and then 



Appendicitis 149 

debating before the patient the possibilities of an opera- 
tion being necessary. No, indeed! I make up my mind 
regarding the diagnosis — making sure that the case is 
not a twist or a complete cut-off of some kind; then I 
settle down to a straight, unchanging course. No more 
manipulating and digging into the abdomen. These dig- 
gings are what rupture pus-sacs and force speedy opera- 
tions. The surgeon often finds ruptured pus-sacs, but 
he need not look beyond himself or his associates for the 
cause. He or they have ruptured it ; and, of course, there 
is nothing left but to perform a hasty operation on a case 
made doubtful — made dangerous — by maltreatment. 

How should appendicitis be treated? No diseases 
offer such gratifying results as typhoid fever and appen- 
dicitis when treated by a scientific letting-alone — not a 
pretty-near letting-alone.* 

Keep in bed; use two quarts of warm water as an 
enema night and morning; no food; nothing is to go into 
the stomach until the bowels move. If the case is appen- 
dicitis with abscess, the bowel movements are cut off from 
above by abscess pressure, and the muscle fixation that 
nature provides to keep the parts protected and prevent 
rupture taking place in any direction except into the 
bowels. Hence no attempt should be made to move the 
bowels, except by the enemas, as above recommended. 

When the usual operation is performed, drainage 
must be made against gravity; whereas, if the opening 
of the abscess is left to nature, it will take place in 
such a way as to favor drainage; namely, into the gut. 
There are many advantages in allowing nature to have 
her own way in disposing of the ulceration. In the 
first place, fasting will allow a thorough house-clean- 
ing; the abscess will come to full maturity, and when it 



*Those who would go deeper into this subject should read 
my monographs on "Appendicitis" and "Typhoid Fever." 



150 Care of Children and Mothers 

opens it will drain well and heal by granulation; the 
patient will be saved the inconvenience of adhesions that 
follow most operations, compelling later operations for 
their relief; and a physician who is capable of piloting a 
case to a successful natural cure ought to be able to 
teach the recovered victims of appendicitis how to live 
to prevent a recurrence. All diseases are liable to recur, 
unless the habits of life that brought on the diseases in 
the first place are understood and corrected. 

There can be no appendicitis without habitual intes- 
tinal indigestion ; and this habit is built and continued by 
overeating, and wrong food combinations and preparation. 

If this disease starts with nausea, vomiting, and 
diarrhea, the patient will feel quite sick for a few T days ; 
but, if kept quiet, and nothing given by mouth — not even 
water — until the sickness at the stomach subsides ; if two 
quart enemas of warm w r ater be given night and morning, 
and either an ice-pack or a hot-water bottle over the 
appendix — the former w r hen the temperature is 103° 
Fahrenheit or above, or the latter if the temperature is 
low — the patient will become comfortable inside of 
seventy-two hours, and suffer no more, except at times 
from the discomfort of hunger, and a desire to eat or get 
out of bed. When the disease is treated properly, it may 
be said, as of typhoid fever treated intelligently, that it is 
a very comfortable sickness. And, what is better, the 
death-rate is eliminated. 

CROUP— CATARRHAL LARYNGITIS 

Laryngitis is croup. Writers describe three kinds; 
namely, catarrhal, membranous, and spasmodic. 

The three are one, but varying types, depending on 
the constitutional states of the patients. 

Children that have slight digestive derangement will 
take on a light or spasmodic croup. The force of the 



Croup 151 

disease is not great enough to last longer than a few 
hours before the body rights itself and the disease is gone. 
Treatment for light form, or spasmodic croup. — Give 
hot foot-bath, or give a hot bath to the entire body, and 
keep the child in the bath until fully relaxed and all 
croupal symptoms are gone. Then put the child to bed, 
keeping the feet and hands warm. Do not feed until the 
symptoms are gone; then feed three meals a day. Stop 
feeding between meals, and stop candy-eating. 

PSEUDO-MEMBRANOUS LARYNGITIS — TRUE CROUP 
DIPHTHERIA 

There has always been a division of opinion as to mem- 
branous croup being diphtheria. 

My opinion has always been that the two are one and 
the same, location in the air passage and the severity of 
the constitutional involvement causing the difference in 
type. 

Where a child's resistance is badly broken dow r n from 
wrong care, the severity of the symptoms may be great 
enough to kill in from a few hours to a few days. 

All cases will die when the membranous deposit 
extends to the bronchial tubes. 

The foundation for the disease goes back to catarrhal 
inflammation caused by chronic indigestion. On this 
established derangement may be grafted any epidemic 
influence. 

When conditions of domestic or civic environment 
favor the development of putrefaction, the septic variety 
of throat diseases may be expected to develop. 

Treatment. — If fasting, warm bathing from three 
times a day to every three hours, and copious enemas two 
or three times a day, will not save, nothing will. 

Light forms of diphtheria will get well with little at- 
tention beyond fasting and bathing. This has reference 
to diphtheria located in the throat elsewhere than in the 



152 Care of Children and Mothers 

larynx. When in the larynx, it is croup, and what the 
end will be must depend upon the profoundness of the con- 
stitutional involvement. If great, the mortality is fright- 
ful. 

Sanitary science, better housekeeping, and cleanliness 
have struck old-fashioned diphtheria a death-blow. When 
cities learn how to get rid of all putrefaction, diseases 
w T hich are developed from filth will be gone forever. 

HERNIA 

Young children often have hernia. The child should 
be kept well and free from any cause of crying ; for severe 
crying increases the hernia. 

There is not much that can be done in a domestic way 
for this disease. The family physician must be consulted, 
and a truss secured. Sometimes a child will have a 
hernia at the navel. A band, with a small pad one-half 
inch or three-fourths of an inch thick sewed on to it, placed 
over the hernia and fastened around the body of the child, 
will usually be sufficient to keep the hernia reduced. Or, 
what would be better, get a regular umbilical hernia truss. 
This is something a doctor should look after. 

EPILEPSY 

It is not customary to call the convulsive seizures in in- 
fants epilepsy; yet they are one and the same thing; for 
convulsions, fits, or epilepsy are produced by nervous irri- 
tation. The common cause of convulsions or epilepsy in 
children is deranged digestion or suppression of skin erup- 
tions. The cause points to the remedy; namely: indiges- 
tion must be overcome by cleaning out the stomach and 
bowels, and keeping the child away from food until it is 
all right. Where it comes from the suppression of a rash, 
such as measles, scarlet fever, etc., baths should be used 



Epilepsy 153 

to establish or bring about a breaking-out on the surface 
of the body of the rash that is peculiar to the disease. 

Older children may develop true epilepsy — periodic 
convulsions. The predisposing cause of convulsions is a 
neurotic temperament. Without this temperament rellex 
irritations are not liable to manifest as convulsions. The 
cause in many cases is quite obscure, but in the majority 
of cases it is irritation and infection developing in the 
stomach and bowels, or particularly in the lower bowels. 
In nearly all cases, if an examination is made, there will 
be found colitis, constipation, and probably rectal derange- 
ment. Sometimes pin-worms, intestinal worms, or para- 
sites will cause the disease. 

Treatment. — The cure must come through proper feed- 
ing and care of the body. Where the convulsions appear 
to be established, a physician should be consulted. It is 
not a disease to trifle with in a domestic way, and under 
no circumstances should children be medicated; for there 
can be no possibility of a cure brought about by drugs. 

PIN-WORMS 

Pin-worms are very small worms located in the rectum, 
keeping the child uneasy, fretful, and inclined to scratch 
or rub the fundus. It shows perverted digestion. The 
cause may be said to be deranged digestion. 

Treatment. — The eating must be corrected; also the 
general care of the body. Small enemas should be used 
daily — one teaspoonful of salt in a pint of warm water. 

CHOREA OR ST. VITUS' DANCE 

This is a purely nervous derangement, and there must 
be a neurotic temperament as a predisposing cause. The 
exciting cause may be anything that will use up the child's 
nerve resistance. Such children should be fed verv care- 



154 Care of Children and Mothers 

fully. Their food should be properly combined. Over- 
stimulation should be avoided. Children of this temper- 
ament and inclined to this disease should be trained into 
sleeping one or two hours every day. They must be kept 
away from anything that cultivates fear.. Anything that 
has a tendency to frighten must be avoided. They should 
not be allowed to play too long or get overfatigued. 
Ghost stories must be kept away from them. They should 
not be treated harshly; for punishment only brings on 
nerve derangement. 

Treatment. — Where the disease is established, the child 
should be put to bed, and kept there until the choreic or 
convulsive movements are thoroughly controlled. No food 
should be given for at least one week. The second week 
fruit of any kind may be taken. Then, if the. nervousness 
is overcome and the child has control over its movements, 
by the beginning of the third week it may be fed fruit for 
one meal a day, and toasted bread and butter, followed 
with a glass of milk, for the other two meals. This should 
be kept up for one or two weeks; after which the child 
should have bread or any kind of breakfast food, with 
milk, for the breakfast ; at noon, cottage cheese ; and in the 
evening, meat or eggs twice a week, with cooked, non- 
starchy vegetables and salad. For about five dinners dur- 
ing the week the child should have potatoes, whole-wheat 
bread, corn bread, or any of the decidedly starchy foods, 
with the vegetables and combination salad. 

The lunch at noon may be varied : about twice a week 
plain cake and milk, or fresh fruit and toasted bread ; once 
a week custard, with plain cake or zwieback. 

INFANTILE PAEALYSIS 

Paralysis in children, the same as in grown people, 
may be divided into two classes; namely, cerebral and 
spinal. 



Infantile Paralysis 155 

Infantile cerebral paralysis, or palsy, is known also as 
spastic diplegia (spastic, "to draw up;" diplegia, "double 
stroke," both arms or both legs involved), and by other 
names, such as spasmodic tabes dorsalis, paraplegia, 
paralysis of lower extremities, semiplegia or cerebral 
atrophic palsy (one-sided paralysis). 

The time and origin of paralysis are divided into: 
intra-uterine, or the class that develops before birth, and 
those that develop after birth. The ante-birth causes are 
not hereditary; for an influence strong enough to cause 
paralysis to be hereditary would prevent conception ; or, 
in other words, sterility prevents such calamities. When 
it occurs before birth, the mother has either abused her- 
self, met with an accident, or been abused. Attempted 
abortion no doubt is a cause in some cases, especially 
when the attempt has been made with drugs. 

Etiology, — Injuries to the child, caused by a too early 
discharge of the amniotic fluid. If this takes place before 
the neck of the womb is dilated — before the last stage of 
labor (which, for the good of the child, should not last 
longer than five minutes) — great skill will be required on 
the part of the physician to prevent the child from being 
injured or killed by the expulsive pains — by the vigorous 
contractions of the womb on the child's body on account 
of the loss of the cushion of water, or amniotic fluid, that 
prevents this influence. To such labors may be charged 
many cases of paralysis and injuries to the brain that are 
not noticed except in mind development. 

Sexual assaults, because of ignorance of fathers, no 
doubt cause many cases of paralysis. Imprudence in eat- 
ing, and overeating, cause long labors by building too 
large children, and cause mothers to be too stout — too fat 
would more nearly express it. Being heavily incumbered 
as many women are, the pelvic outlet is obstructed, caus- 
ing long births, lacerations, and other complications. 



156 Care op Children and Mothers 

Injury from instruments is another cause. Prudent 
physicians will not use instruments except to expedite 
labor; and this hurry is not necessary except in compli- 
cated cases. As a rule, there is no need of hurry, unless 
there has been a premature discharge of waters, or other 
complications not necessary to mention here. 

Whooping-cough, when nursed improperly and medi- 
cated, is very much inclined to develop cerebro-spinal de- 
rangement. 

Where there is defective development of the brain or 
nervous system, paralysis must be a matter of course, 
when the right exciting influence is brought about. 

Arrested development may be brought about by con- 
vulsions. And infantile convulsions may be caused by 
indigestion. Babies fed too frequently, or fed after there 
are signs of indigestion, are often thrown into convulsions. 
Indigestion in mothers, caused by a reduction of the alka- 
linity of the fluids of their bodies, is a cause of convul- 
sions in children. Septic infection from a badly managed 
umbilical cord is a cause of convulsions in babies, seldom 
recognized. 

Cerebral paralysis is almost always of a paraplegic 
(lower-limb) or diplegic (bilateral) type of paralysis. 
Some cases present a relaxed condition or flaccidity of 
muscles, instead of the rigidity which is rather character- 
istic of cerebral palsy. Mental impairment, more or less, 
is nearly always present. 

Meningeal hemorrhage is often the cause of convul- 
sions, such as mothers describe as "inward spasms." 
Where partial recovery takes place, a secondary lesion 
may start up, such as inflammation of the membranes of 
the brain or spinal cord, or both; atrophy (want of nour- 
ishment from a cut-off blood supply) ; and sclerosis 
(hardening) of the cortex (outside or gray matter of the 
brain). Cysts (water or fatty tumors) may form on the 



Infantile Paralysis 157 

surface of the brain where the hemorrhage existed. The 
spinal cord often becomes involved. 

The causes in the third variety are vascular, such as 
hemorrhage, embolism (obstruction of an artery or capil- 
lary blood-vessel, but not always a blood-clot), consequent 
on disease of the heart, rheumatism, scarlet fever, pneu- 
monia, or septic poisoning. These diseases predispose to 
embolism. The septic variety may be nursed from a 
mother who is suffering from septic infection developed 
by an injury to the neck of the womb at childbirth ; or the 
mother may have retained a small piece of placenta (after- 
birth), that, in slowly necrosing — decaying — causes more 
or less infection of the mother, and, through her milk, of 
the child. 

It should be seen from the above that causes and types 
are numerous for this disease as well as for all others. 

Symptoms.— All cerebral types of paralysis are similar 
in many respects. In the earlier years of life — from 
birth to three years of age, and then up to ten, and even 
after maturity — this disease may develop. Spastic symp- 
toms (a drawing-up, or spasmodic, state) are common. 
Where the limbs are drawn up or crossed, it is due to 
paralysis of opposing muscles. Every movement in health 
that can be willed is brought about by the contraction of 
one set of muscles and relaxation of others. This is, of 
course, exaggerated in paralysis; for in normal life the 
consenting or giving-way muscles give steadying power, 
while in paralysis this is lost. Unsteadiness of movement 
means paralysis. It may be temporary, or it may be per- 
manent and progressive. In children the tendency is to 
improve, if there is not complete disorganization of the 
parts involved in the injury. 

In those cases where there has been an intrauterine 
lesion, loss of power is a pronounced symptom. The 
presence of convulsions, cyanosis (blueness of the sur- 



158 Care of Children and Mothers 

face of the body), and unconsciousness calls attention to 
lost power. 

Convulsions occurring soon after birth are sometimes 
caused by hemorrhage. Where the convulsions occur 
from one to four weeks after birth, the mother's health 
must be looked after carefully, and if she has sustained an 
injury to the neck of the womb, and the discharge has a 
fetid or septic odor, the child should not be allowed to 
continue nursing. When the cause of convulsions is 
found and removed, it may be too late; a change in the 
brain or spinal cord may have been brought about that 
will lead to slight paralysis or idiocy. 

These unfortunate children suffer in degree from a 
slight mental defect to complete idiocy. So-called incor- 
rigibility comes from slight and unsuspected cases of 
cerebral paralysis. 

Children that are slow to talk and walk suffer from 
slight paralysis. Indeed, often the only symptoms noticed 
are the trophic (those of impaired digestion and assimila- 
tion ) . 

The children that are slow to walk will be noticed to 
have a tendency for the thighs to be adducted (drawn 
across each other), and will show symptoms of chorea 
(abnormal muscular movements) and lost power for 
co-ordinating movements (athetosis — continual change of 
position of fingers or toes, inability to keep them still). 

The third, or acquired, type of this form of paralysis 
is usually hemiplegia (one-sided paralysis), although 
paraplegia (both legs) and diplegia (both arms) do 
develop. 

The disease may develop any time after birth, although 
more frequently before the fifth year, and often begins 
with convulsions. Where the convulsions are frequent, a 
convulsive habit may become established, and then the 
disease is called epilepsy. There are two varieties of this 
disease: the convulsive type and the petit mal variety. 



Infantile Paralysis 159 

Everybody can diagnose the convulsive form; but the 
light form, where consciousness is lost for only a few 
seconds, and the type that destroys judgment and moral 
sense for a few hours or for a few days each month, can- 
not be known to laymen or courts of law. 

Where epilepsy continues through life, the subjects 
become mentally defective. The mental state ranges from 
weak-mindedness to idiocy. The disease is often so slight 
that it will not be noticed, and the mental lapses and 
defects pass as wilful perversity or incorrigibility. Many 
boys and girls are wasting their lives, and opportunity to 
get w^ell, under the guardianship of schools for the incor- 
rigible. The institutions are conducted — from the judges 
who sentence the children, to the superintendents who 
preside over the institutions, on to the incumbents of the 
smallest assistant offices — by men and women who are 
no more capable of passing correct judgment on the real 
causes of these children's diseases than the victims are 
capable of passing upon their diseases themselves. 

There is much talk, these days, of the humane manner 
of caring for incorrigible children. The treatment could 
be, and has been, worse. But has boasted enlightenment 
any real reason for self-praise? When a child or minor 
has a lapse of mental co-ordination from a slight cerebral 
paralysis, and commits a crazy act (recognized as wilful 
and immoral), it is supposed to be kindness to brand him 
an incorrigible and banish him to a petty penal institu- 
tion, where he mingles with hundreds of others suffering 
in a like manner. But is it? Is it a kindness for a 
criminal judge to recommend clemency, or to commute a 
death sentence to life imprisonment, in a case where the 
victim who committed the act of murder was under the 
impelling influences of a mental delusion generated by the 
aura of a light cerebral convulsion or epilepsy? The 
attack may have been generated by excessive venery; or 
by the use of tobacco, starchy food, alcoholics ; or by drugs 

11 



160 Care of Children and Mothers 

given by a physician for a cough or headache; or the 
murderer may have been provoked by the person killed, 
and the excitement proved to be the last straw — the last 
small influence in a chain of morbid influences, to set off 
a cerebral convulsion (mental convulsion) — and during 
the reign of mental excitement, murder was committed, 
wholly out of the consciousness of the one committing it. 

Is- it kindness to brand a man a murderer when he 
commits the act while in a state of unconsciousness ? Is 
it kindness to banish children to petty penal institutions, 
and brand them incorrigible, when there is a slight 
cerebral paralysis that only requires a little stimulation 
above normal to bring on a lapse of consciousness — mental 
incoordination — in which state they act with as much 
rationality as in dreams, and are fully as responsible, 
and no more? 

Our juvenile courts may be an improvement over the 
old way of handling so-called juvenile criminals; but the 
best of them — even our own Judge Lindsey's court — is not 
a credit to modern intelligence. I do not believe the 
Judge knows anything more about the lives of his 
sentenced victims after their incarceration, except a 
possible few, than the judges of other criminal courts do 
of their victims. Neither has he, nor his co-workers, any 
real conception of the nature of the cause of the delin- 
quencies which their humane ( ?) punishment is supposed 
to cure. It is a case of the blind leading the blind. 

Much is made of the fact that Judge Lindsey can 
sentence boys to their prison, and that they will go with- 
out a guard. This fact is full of significance; but, as it 
has not penetrated the ivory dome of those "whom this 
concerns," to the extent of becoming a workable knowl- 
edge, why should it be recognized by lawyers, judges, and 
laymen as something remarkable? Why do the so-called 
bad boys go to the juvenile penitentiaries without a 
guard ? Because, in the first place, they are not criminals ; 



Infantile Paralysis 161 

and, secondly, their numerous mental lapses have called 
down upon them the condemnation of parents, guardians, 
and friends to such an extent that they have almost 
decided they have no friend left, and they are as well 
off in one place as in another ; and the Judge, instead of 
being cross and censorious (as the boys expect a great 
judge to be), is found to be "making up" to them and 
sympathizing with them. Then, why shall they not try 
to please him, as he is about the only friend they have 
left, since father and mother no longer have faith in them ? 
Of course, they will go alone; and they will "get there," 
unless a paroxysm of cerebral paralysis overtakes them 
on their way; then they will run off after the will-o'-the- 
wisp of their imagination ; and, when rationality returns, 
they can give no reason for their act. They know, down 
in their consciousness, that they intended to do as the 
Judge wished them to do; just as they had resolved 
hundreds of times to do just as father, mother, or teacher 
had desired them to do, but as often had awakened to 
consciousness and found that they had not done so. 
Another reason why they do not break the pact with the 
Judge is because they do not make many promises to him. 
If they were with the Judge as much as they are with 
their parents, they would break their promises to him as 
often as they break them to parents and teachers. The 
judge possesses no charm that will antidote incor- 
rigibility (?) — that will correct a cerebral derangement; 
indeed, he does not know the cause of the boy's moral 
lapses, any more than the boy himself knows, or the boy's 
parents and teachers know. The sum of all their beliefs 
is that the boy is bad, and, if they can keep him locked up, 
he will outgrow it. The real incorrigibility is of the 
judge, parents, and managers of the penal institutions, 
and, over them all, the great medical profession. 

The institutions, instead of curing the brain diseases 
of the juvenile criminals, bring a lot of had boys together 



162 Care of Children and Mothers 

who are branded incorrigible, and through the power of 
suggestion they are made into what the public and 
juvenile courts say they are. 

There is but one cure for infantile paralysis ; namely, 
build up the co-ordinate muscles — the muscles that can 
do vicarious work for those that are paralyzed. In 
paralysis of mind the same plan must be carried out; 
namely, when one of the leading moral faculties is 
paralyzed, all of the co-ordinate faculties must be built 
up and made to do vicarious work for the impaired or 
lost faculty. Is this done? Exactly the opposite is what 
our great juvenile courts and penal institutions are doing. 
If any of the victims recover, or improve very materially, 
the credit is due to the conserving powers of nature 
operating in spite of all opposition. 

It is a hard charge, the one I am about to bring, and 
I am conscious of the omnibus character of it; but the 
truth should not hang its head and apologize: Courts, 
including the juvenile courts, and all institutions for 
hearding together human beings of a certain class and 
type, are just as many centers for building, intensifying, 
and making the disease, which they are supposed to cor- 
rect, more general and harder to cure. 

What is the usual home treatment of mental defects f — 
In cases where talking and walking are delayed, mothers 
and fathers can see the defect, and will speak to the family 
physician about it. They would not think of abusing the 
child for the delay. Where there is a delay in developing 
a comprehension of certain studies, less patience is shown 
the child ; but where the moral nature is slow to develop, 
and where there is moral weakness, extending from a 
slight defect up to moral idiocy, the wise people institute 
courts of justice and penal institutions for punishing the 
bad people. People are bad just because they want to 
be — this is the tacit, if not the expressed, declaration of 
the people and the people's courts. 



Infantile Paralysis 163 

Yes, people are long, short, thin, or thick, just because 
they want to be. People love music or not, just as they 
please. People have red, black, or light hair, just as they 
like. Indeed, as a matter of fact, what we are is largely 
a matter of luck. We may have good parents, but a 
slight injury at childbirth may put us "to the bad" all 
our lives, and the judges and preachers and teachers, 
along with our own folk, will brand us as incorrigible, 
and educate us into being what they say we are, by con- 
signing us to criminal-building institutions. 

No offense is intended to the well-intentioned people 
connected with the work of caring for incorrigibles. But 
there is need of better understanding. 

No one is bad because he wills to be. He is molded 
into what he is by the public's interpretation of his 
defects. Sometimes a defect is lionized until it becomes 
a veritable advantage — a success. Acquisitiveness, when 
expended in monopolizing a commodity until it brings 
great wealth, makes its possessor great ; whereas, if along 
with great acquisitiveness there should be a cerebral 
defect — a paralysis causing lapses of consciousness — then 
great desire might help itself with the grosser methods of 
the bandit. The bandit does not evolve into his greatness 
suddenly. He gets there by easy stages, and through the 
suggestions of courts, churches, friends, and enemies. 

The physician often grows his greatness by helping to 
build incorrigible people. He brings this about by hurry- 
ing labor — by causing the mother to give birth to her 
child a few hours earlier than natural ; and his expediting 
methods produce an injury to the child's brain; or the 
mother is injured in childbirth, and the septic infection 
poisons the child and throws it into convulsions — a disease 
that leaves a permanent defect and causes the child to be 
pronounced incorrigible by juvenile courts, etc. The 
physician is rewarded for his butchery, by being honored 
as the first in his profession — a great wielder of "twi- 



164 Care op Children and Mothers 

light sleep" an expediter of childbirth. Instruments and 
drugs that hurry labors build infantile paralysis. "God's 
curse" is set aside, and man's substituted, resulting in 
paralysis, idiocy, or insanity, instead of physical and 
mental health. 

Every defect stamped on the human body by drugs 
and surgery, and misbranded the science and art of 
medicine and surgery, adds to the sum-total of human 
incorrigibility; and those who succeed in doing the 
greatest amount of this vandalism are often lauded high 
above the heads of their contemporaries as being great. 
But the greatness, if understood, would be recognized as 
refined barbarism. Such people, however, are on a par 
with the mob who murdered Christ, and who brought 
forth the greatest prayer ever offered up ; namely : 
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 

There is a great need of having reformers, reforma- 
tions, and reformatories converted into schools equipped 
with especially qualified teachers. Certainly, from judges 
down, they who have to do with cerebral paralysis should 
be drilled into knowing the difference between caring for 
mental defects and wilful wantons — if there is any such 
libel on creation. 

It should be generally known that there is no bad: 
there is no wanton; no one does wrong because he wills 
to do so. All so-called incorrigibles have their desire to 
do good and be good; but they are handicapped by an 
anatomical defect. There is some defect in the brain 
which causes its functioning to be capricious, and this 
abnormality is branded by court and church — by legal and 
moral ethical standards — as wilful breaches of law and 
order ; and that, too, by a class of minds who should know 
better. Who would not think of a judge who holds a 
victim of epileptic convulsions, or paralysis, criminally 
responsible for his deviations from the normal, as a man 
sadly needing training in the laws of cause and effect? 



Infantile Paralysis 165 

To common minds, the idea of punishing for a defec- 
tive body is absurd ; yet we sanction all sorts of legalized 
abuses to the victims of mental defects. 

Treatment. — The treatment for all varieties of 
paralysis is to establish order and a correct life. All 
stimulants must be avoided, and the eating must be 
rational and suited to the needs. Prevention is of greater 
importance than cure; for too often curing is impossible. 
Mothers must live normally. They must live in a way 
to have quick and easy labor, and be able to nurse their 
children the first year, giving plenty of milk. Mothers 
and fathers must know the need of avoiding stimulants, 
and doctors must stop injuring children with drugs and 
instruments. 

The children whose physical and mental defects are 
pronounced should be watched and cared for in keeping 
with their needs. Their misdeeds will be given credit 
where credit is due. In other words, they will not be 
held responsible for what they cannot help. 

The other class — those whose mental lamenesses can- 
not be seen by the physical eyes, whose defects cannot 
be seen except by the eye of understanding — need intelli- 
gent care. The blind spots in their brains may be bridged 
by cultivating other faculties to do vicarious work for 
the undeveloped faculties. 

Great care should be taken that vicious faculties are 
not given a training that will in time completely sub- 
merge the higher faculties ; for when that occurs the vic- 
tims will be given up as wholly bad and sent to penal in- 
stitutions for life. 

How can such mistakes be avoided, when laymen of 
not always the brightest intellects, and who have a lot 
of personal bad habits, are placed in control of these 
unfortunates ? 

The care of mental defects should always be in the 
hands of the best educated, and should be directed by 



166 Care of Children and Mothers 

physicians who know more than to believe that trouble- 
some boys are simply incorrigible because they will to be 
bad, or are responsible for their own degeneracy. 

Ignorance, drugs, coffee, tea, tobacco, and alcoholics, 
with surgical insanity, must go. Civilization's maiming 
and insaning habits must be known and banished; then 
we can say that we have removed the cause of infantile 
paralysis, incorrigibility, and crime. 

INFANTILE PARALYSIS CAUSING INCORRIGIBILITY 

Children are subjected to many head injuries, begin- 
ning at birth and not ending until their exuberance of 
spirit, wiiich is peculiar to all young animals, subsides, 
and the more serious affairs of life are taken up. Chil- 
dren's love of fun and frolic costs them many bumps and 
falls on the head, and, if they have small resistance and 
are autotoxemic, injuries that cause extravasation of 
blood will take on inflammation; whereas, if the fluids 
of their bodies were not inflammable, they would react 
from injury and the restoration would be normal, speedy, 
and complete. 

The wave of medical insanity that accompanied the in- 
troduction of "twilight sleep" increased the medical obses- 
sion on the subject of painless labor, or easy childbirth, 
and until the craze has spent its force, children must 
suffer by being subjected to greater injury than 
since the introduction of instruments and chloroform 
in obstetric practice, because the people have awak- 
ened to their supposed rights on this subject, and 
they will demand painless labors. This will cause inex- 
perienced physicians, as well as unscrupulous ones, to 
work the remedy overtime. The doctor who should be 
running a street car, or be out in the woods cutting ties, 
or back in the schoolroom teaching, will endeavor to sub- 
stitute "twilight sleep" and the obstetric instruments for 
knowledge and dexterity ; and the result will be that chil- 



Infantile Paralysis 167 

dren's heads will be injured with instruments, and their 
nervous systems will be subjected to the injurious effects 
of narcotic drugs used to produce "twilight sleep," which 
are exceedingly detrimental to brains so tender. The 
drug influence, added to the autotoxemia derived from the 
mother's incumbered state which is brought on from glut- 
tonizing during pregnancy, is an influence well calculated 
to alter the function of the brain of the child to such an 
extent as to cause, in some cases, petit mal (light form of 
epilepsy), and non-development of an isolated brain cen- 
ter or part of a center. Babies that are nursed by their 
mothers will have their food supply more or less injured 
by the effect of the drugs used on their mothers. The in- 
juries at birth, as well as the drug influences, are liable to 
start a perversion that will prevent an ideal brain devel- 
opment. To make myself understood: Suppose a child 
born to a line of ancestry noted for honesty, truth-telling, 
or philanthropy should receive a slight injury at that part 
of the brain from which such impulses are sent out, and a 
dwarfing follows ; then dishonesty, lying, and misanthropy 
ensue, unless education can be made to bridge the mental 
chasm. 

Just how much injury will be sustained by mothers 
and children in artificial labors cannot be estimated; for 
the influence will be too subtile and far-reaching. The 
present-day type of mind is too much given over to frag- 
mentary thinking to be able to link an injury of a mother 
in childbirth today to a chain of morbid sequences ending 
in fibroid tumor or cancer in ten or twenty years after- 
ward; or to trace injuries of children during their birth 
to infantile paralysis, petit mal, petty crimes, incorrigi- 
bility, and at last the penitentiary or electric chair, in 
from one month to fifty years after the injuries were re- 
ceived. Our present-day teachings and beliefs in causes 
and effects do not help many medical minds to trace an 



168 Care op Children and Mothers 

instrumental delivery, with injury to a child's head, to 
incorrigibility during childhood and a criminal life in 
manhood. The opposing argument will be: "Thousands 
of children are instrumentally delivered every year; why 
are they not all incorrigible?" Because not all are in- 
jured; or, if they are, all do not nurse mothers whose milk 
has become infected from a neglected tear in the neck of 
the womb ; not all are mismanaged in nursing ; not all 
have been drugged by family physicians ; not all have been 
subjected to osteopathic or chiropractic manipulations; 
not all have been subjected to one or more of the thou- 
sand-and-one other influences that aggravate the first in- 
jury and cause a perversion of development of a part, or 
all, of a special nerve center. 

There is not an incorrigible child or adult who is not 
made so by defective development, and subsequent influ- 
ences of wrong mental and physical life: eating unsuit- 
able foods, and being taught or controlled in an unsuit- 
able manner — fed unsuitable mental food. 

Infantile paralysis, of the type under discussion, 
should be understood. The psychological expert must be 
the adviser in such cases, and the function of the brain 
that is lost must be known; then all collateral functions 
must be overdeveloped, so to speak, to make up for the 
lost function. The cure for incorrigibility should be 
started early, before parents have, by mismanagement, 
caused a perversion of the collateral brain functions. By 
that I mean : When children are abused for mental lapses 
that they can no more prevent than they can stop the sun 
in its course, such correction develops a resentment. In 
this way their benevolent, self-saving functions are 
changed about, and the good are made bad. "My parents 
and society believe me bad, and I shall have the game as 
well as the name" Thousands of splendid children are 
made incorrigible because of not being understood. 



Infantile Paralysis 169 

These are the children whose paralysis is of the brain 
type. Those whose type of paralysis leaves its mark on 
the body — lost power over perhaps a group, or part of a 
group, of muscles of one leg or one arm, or all the mus- 
cles of one or both legs, or one or both arms, etc. — have 
mental defects or perversions, preventing perfect brain 
development; but, on account of their physical deformi- 
ties, they receive much sympathy and consideration, and 
when the physical paralysis cannot be overcome by devel- 
oping collateral aid, the mental is benefited by the kind 
treatment usually accorded those lame in the body, and, 
as a result, we often see amiable cripples. They have been 
taught the great lesson of securing the benefit that mis- 
fortune brings when the misfortune is fully understood 
and advantage is taken of it. 

Intelligence will some day convert the injuries, which 
now end in building incorrigibles and criminals, into 
blessings in disguise. That day is a long way in the fu- 
ture, however; for before such a state of society can 
evolve, old beliefs must go. Such beliefs as are at the 
foundation of our law, religion, and ethics — namely, that 
sin, crime, all we call bad, is from the wilful choosing of 
the incorrigible; that man may choose between good and 
evil — must be blotted out; for how can man choose be- 
tween good and evil when, before he knows the good, 
he is driven by a force he does not understand, into doing 
the evil, until it becomes a habit, and the habit of all 
who know him is to treat him as an incorrigible? Before 
man can discriminate, evil habits are formed that cannot 
be broken because they have become organized — organic 
change has taken place — and the function must be that 
of evil, or what we call evil; for it is in opposition to 
established order. The tragic part of this fact is that 
this fixed state has been forced by established custom — - 
the cause of crime is fixed on the criminal and not on 
society. 



170 Care of Children and Mothers 

Who can say that what appears good to the conven- 
tional does not appear evil to those handicapped in mind? 
How can anyone judge motives, or the genesis of motives, 
when he is absolutely ignorant of the physiology and 
pathology of the mind? How can anyone think that a 
correct anatomy and physiology — in other words, a 
healthy mind — can generate incorrigibility and crime? 

A paralyzed muscle, or a diseased body, is not expected 
to act normally; then why expect more of a diseased 
mind? This point in social life is where man shows his 
childishness and lack of power for sound reasoning. A 
child seeing a man limping declares at once: "The man 
is lame." If asked why it thinks so, it will quickly reply : 
"No one will walk lame tcho can walk otherwise" If a 
judge, preacher, or doctor sees someone jimmying a 
window or a safe, he at once notifies the police of what 
the bad man is doing, and the ~bad man is run in. If the 
bad man happens to be a mere boy, he may say to his 
captors, in answer to their queries why he is guilty of 
such conduct: "I do not know why I act so; I appear 
not to have the right control of myself." Or to his father 
or best friend he may say : "I do not know why I act as 
I do, unless it is because I am a fool." If those whom 
this concerns care to investigate, they will find that in- 
corrigibility is marked by cycles and periodicities. When 
crime is committed periodically, what relationship does 
it hold to epilepsy, the tide, the seasons, the comets, or 
any other phenomenon of nature? And how responsible 
is man for these phenomena ? If responsible for one, why 
not for all? In reply to this, the wise doctors of public 
safety will say to the epileptic (the sufferer from petit 
mal) — the boy who says he does not know what makes 
him act so, unless he be a fool : "We will teach you to 
have the right control." Which means that the punish- 
ment will be of such a character that right control will 
be given. What would such a cure do for the physically 



Infantile Paralysis 171 

lame man? Who would send for a policeman, a public 
prosecutor, or a judge to advise what should be done with 
a man with a paralyzed leg or arm, or a woman with a 
cancer of the breast, or a minister with a wry face — a 
face all pulled to one side — from paralysis? Why not 
consult them for these physical defects? Their advice 
is sought in infinitely more important, difficult, and com- 
plex matters. The police give heroic treatment (third 
degree) to many boys, men, and women who have paraly- 
sis of small centers of the brain that causes them to limp 
mentally. Such treatment as they give them never cures 
them, but it is thought to be good practice — it is the cus- 
tom ; it has wholesome suggestive influence on other people 
who think of becoming incorrigible just for the pleasure 
there is in it. But how about the legal cures given in state 
institutions — industrial homes for incorrigible boys and 
girls, jails and penitentiaries? Are all these patients 
cured, and is the treatment proving suggestively prophy- 
lactic? Are there any cures? Do not consult statistics, 
for you know what Carlyle said of them; and do not 
ask those who are interested in the perpetuation of such 
institutions. It is generally admitted that institutions 
for criminals and sick people cannot be built fast enough. 
That ought to brand law and medicine as quack institu- 
tions. 

Doctors, policemen, prosecutors, judges, and even 
preachers, know a raving maniac when they are occa- 
sionally knocked down by one, or when laymen who have 
been associating with a demented person for a while re- 
port the unfortunate fellow to these commissioners of 
safety. 

The incorrigible individual who is just bad because 
he desires to be, but who is not bad enough to have his 
rights interfered with, will be allowed to go his pace — 
frequent licensed bawdy-houses, saloons, and gambling 
dens — until he runs amuck and kills wife, friend, or 



172 Care of Children and Mothers 

others. Then he will be cured of his insanity by being 
legally killed. 

The average doctor can tell when people are insane 
enough to make them as dangerous as mad bulls ; but, so 
far as understanding w T hat the real condition is when 
boys and girls take a delight in being bad, he knows little 
about it. 

ACUTE EPIDEMIC POLIOMYELITIS 

Like all diseases, acute infantile paralysis has many 
causes. All the causes named for cerebral infantile 
paralysis are aids to the epidemic influence that has re- 
ceived so much newspaper and magazine attention in the 
past few years. 

Some of the best authorities 1 declare that the disease 
"appears in children previously well nourished." The 
medical standard for "well nourished" is, unfortunately, 
a bad one; for the average medical man recognizes a 
plethoric state — an incumbered body — as well nourished, 
when, in fact, it is very vulnerable to epidemics and epi- 
demic influences. Incumbered babies are heavy and un- 
wieldy, and are often injured in handling. They are ener- 
vated, autotoxemic, and in just the right state to take 
on inflammations. Their nervous system and brain are 
made very susceptible by their "well-nourished" bodies. 
These are the children who cause long labors, and who 
are liable to suffer injury from drugs and instruments. 
Three to six pounds is the correct weight at birth — safe 
for mothers and children. Nine- to twelve-pound children 
are liable to be injured. 

Children that are previously well nourished have trou- 
ble in teething. The irritation from teeth may throw 
them into convulsions ; indigestion may do the same. Epi- 
demic influences act likewise. In what way? Atmos- 
pheric states that cause epidemics do so through their 
enervating influence. A long wet spell depresses; a long 



Infantile Paralysis 173 

dry and hot, or dry and cold, spell overstimulates, and 
this ends in enervation to such children ; following which 
come children's diseases. 

Epidemic years, when properly investigated, will no 
doubt show a perverted state of vegetable as well as ani- 
mal life. Eye blasts, wheat cheats, corn develops must, 
etc. No doubt the elemental constituents of all farm 
products are changed — the chemistry is changed — and, 
as a result, animal life is affected detrimentally. 

Weather conditions that affect the chemistry of plants 
must affect also the chemistry of animal and human life ; 
and this is shown in epidemic and endemic diseases. 

Epidemic influences of a physical and mental char- 
acter were seen before sanitation was perfected; before 
the swamp lands were drained; before the people were 
well housed, clothed, and educated. Smallpox, cholera, 
diphtheria, scarlet fever, diarrhea, dysentery, spotted 
fever, cerebrospinal meningitis, infantile paralysis or 
poliomyelitis, meningitis, diseases of the cord, frequented 
some parts of the earth all the time. Epidemics are now 
more scarce; for the principal causes — ignorance and 
filth — are being overcome. Filth is going faster than 
ignorance, and, as a result, we see disease giving way in 
clean places in spite of ignorance, and much disease in 
dirty places in spite of much wisdom. For example: 
Smallpox has a habit of thriving in dirty places, in spite 
of medical learning and vaccination. 

Smallpox is said to be controlled by vaccination. If 
this is true, what controlled cholera? If diphtheria has 
been controlled by serum, what has controlled scarlet 
fever? If yellow fever was controlled at Panama by 
corralling the mosquito, what has controlled the yellow 
fever in the southern states, where it has existed as an 
epidemic many times? And why have not the southern 
people yellow fever all the time? They have the mos- 
quito all the time. 



174 Care of Children and Mothers 

If a germ is the cause of poliomyelitis (infantile 
paralysis), why do not the germs cause all children to 
take the disease? Because they are not susceptible, of 
course! Then the causes of susceptibility are the causes 
of all epidemic diseases. Children, then, who have been 
injured, from whatever cause, during embryonic or fetal 
life, at birth, or during the first years of childhood, are 
made susceptible. It stands to reason that a child with 
a sound brain and spinal cord, and in perfect health in 
every other way, will not be influenced by epidemics. 
There is another class of children who will not develop 
the epidemic disease; namely, those already suffering 
from disease of some kind, such as rheumatism, kidney, 
heart, or lung diseases, or decided perversion of nutrition; 
but the epidemic influence will intensify already estab- 
lished diseases. Understand that the epidemic influence 
does not cause the chronic diseases prevailing at the same 
time, but it does intensify all chronic as well as acute dis- 
eases. Why? Because of its general enervating influence. 
The epidemic influence is more that of an intensifier of 
existing states of disease than an originator of types of 
disease. 

The children who are stricken with such diseases as 
meningitis — cerebral or spinal — or diseases of the cord, 
such as the one under consideration, are those who are 
susceptible to nervous diseases — the nervous tempera- 
ment — by inheritance, and who have been unfortunate in 
being injured, as I have described. 

The nervous temperament must not be overlooked as 
a predisposing cause, par excellence, of nervous diseases. 
This temperament makes it possible for any influence that 
uses up nerve energy to bring on nerve diseases; for 
example : any irritations of the nerve centers, either direct 
or reflex, such as injuries to the brain received in child- 
birth or in child-life, from accident, or from teething, 
gastric or intestinal indigestion, worms; the irritations 



Infantile Paralysis 175 

peculiar to the genitalia of children ; excitement and irri- 
tations common to child-life; and, neither last nor least, 
drug influences. 

If disease, such as infantile paralysis, has such a 
multifactored causation, will some wise seer edify us by 
telling us about how soon the scientists of the Rockefeller 
Foundation, backed by $45,000,000, will discover a com- 
posite germ that can cause all the causes resulting in the 
composite effect which is called poliomyelitis, and produce 
a composite serum, or a synthetic drug, that will cure 
the disease? We were told, two or three years ago, that 
Dr. Flexner had solved the riddle. But hold, the truth 
is that $45,000,000 has been on a cold trail all the time ; 
and, what is more, its olfactions are too gross to follow, 
even if given the right! 

And it is a brother of the scientist who did not dis- 
cover the cause and cure of infantile paralysis, who has 
the censoring of medical colleges. He is the man who 
classifies and brands the medical almae matres. It is 
desirable to have all colleges the same, so that the same 
type of doctors will be turned out. 

Forty-five million dollars is a tremendous handicap 
to medical progress, but it will roll off in time ; not, how- 
ever, until truth takes root in lay minds and rolls it off. 

Money is a mental fertilizer, but, like all fertilizers, 
it may be spread on too thick; and that is what Mr. 
Rockefeller has done. But, "God bless him," he does not 
know it, any more than those who are employed by his 
millions know that they are suffering from sciencitis. 

Symptoms. — Acute poliomyelitis usually appears as any other 
infectious disease. Children usually have fever reaching 102° 
or 103°F., followed by a sudden paralysis; sometimes vomiting 
and convulsions may also be present. The reflexes are greatly 
diminished or entirely absent. The emaciation occurs very early, 
and the part affected is limp. The muscles lose their tone and 
are soft and flabby. The surface temperature is cold. Shortening 
takes place. . . . There may be tenderness along the affected 

12 



176 Care of Children and Mothers 

nerve, and pain in the muscles during the acute stage. The 
bladder and rectum are usually not involved. The brain is not 
affected, so that this condition per se does not give rise to mental 
derangement. 

Diagnosis. — This disease usually follows fever. At times it 
is a one-day's fever followed by paralysis. There is "a stationary 
state, lasting one to six weeks. Then a period of improvement/' 
lasting about six to twelve months, and, lastly, "a stage of perma- 
nent disability," lasting throughout life. 

The initial fever is sometimes followed by pain in the limbs, 
and the condition mistaken for rheumatism. In no other disease 
is the response to the faradic current absent as early as in this 
condition. In diphtheritic palsy the previous history will assist 
in clearing up the doubtful diagnosis. Atrophy of the muscles 
occurs very early and is an important diagnostic symptom. — 
Fisher. 

* * * 

Epidemic Poliomyelitis; the Symptomatology and Diagnosis 
in the Acute Stages. — Francis R. Fraser states that in the pre- 
paralytic period and in abortive cases the diagnosis of poliomye- 
litis depends, to a great extent, on the presence of an epidemic 
and association with other cases. Under these circumstances, 
a history of sudden onset, with fever, gastro-intestinal symptoms, 
and perhaps pain, would indicate a careful examination for signs 
of stiffness of the neck and back. If any suspicion of a menin- 
gitic lesion is entertained, lumbar puncture must be performed, 
when the condition of the spinal fluid will clear the diagnosis 
in most cases. The differentiation from a gastro-intestinal upset 
is most difficult, but in gastro-intestinal disorders the spinal 
fluid is normal. Other common infectious diseases commence 
similarly, but in them the pain and hyperesthesia are usually 
absent. Skin lesions in poliomyelitis have been described, but are 
not constant in character, and are present in only a small num- 
ber of cases. Acute rickets is easily mistaken for poliomyelitis 
because of the fever, the prostration, and the tenderness. The 
spinal fluid, however, is negative, and in poliomyelitis pronounced 
enlargement of the liver is not found. Tuberculosis of the hip 
can be differentiated by the history of onset. Acute rheumatic 
arthritis may commence acutely, and the fever, pain, and dis- 
inclination to move be very similar, but the tenderness is local- 
ized to the articular structures, and in poliomyelitis there is no 
swelling of the periarticular structures and no synovial effusion 
Meningitis due to the meningococcus, the pneumococcus, the in- 
fluenza bacillus, to streptococci and staphylococci, gives a spinal 



Infantile Paralysis 177 

fluid with increased cell count, due to polymorphonuclears, and 
the causal organism can be found in the smears and can be 
cultivated. In tuberculous meningitis and syphilitic meningo- 
pyelitis the spinal fluid is very similar to that of poliomyelitis, 
and the clinical findings do not differentiate it until the case 
has been watched for a few days. A positive Wassermann in 
the blood is not sufficient to differentiate syphilitic meningitis, 
as it may be found in acute poliomyelitis, as in other acute in- 
fections. Even when evidence of paralysis, or of involvement of 
the motor system, is found, the diagnosis may not be clear. 
Acute poliomyelitis is probably more often mistaken for cerebro- 
spinal meningitis than for any other disease, especially as paraly- 
sis may occur in both; but the rash, the photophobia, and char- 
acters of the spinal fluid, should differentiate them. — Medical 
Record. 



The pathologist tells us that infantile paralysis is a general 
infection involving principally the cerebro-spinal axis. There is 
a hemorrhagic myelitis, perhaps a mild meningitis, punctate 
hemorrhages in the cord, most marked in the anterior gray 
matter, with perivascular infiltration which causes narrowing of 
the terminal arteries supplying the motor cells, and producing 
anemia even to the point of necrosis in many of them. The 
posterior root ganglia may also be involved. If absorption of 
the infiltration occurs quickly, the anemic cells resume their 
normal function. During this stage, spinal puncture verifies our 
diagnosis, and blood serum, if used, should be given as early as 
possible in doses of from six to twelve c.c, repeated the follow- 
ing day. The Hospital for Deformities and Joint Diseases has 
furnished Dr. George Draper, of the Rockefeller Institute and 
the State Board of Health, blood serum from many donors. 
Excellent results are reported when this serum is used suffi- 
ciently early. Hexamethylenamine is also recommended, as is 
adrenaline when the diagnosis is made too late for the adminis- 
tration of serum. The serum obtained from the spinal canal of 
the patient has been injected into the thigh muscles, in some 
cases, and, it is stated, with beneficial results. Massive doses 
of quinine have been given by some practitioners internally, as 
has echinacea, with alleged benefit. Rest, with quiet surround- 
ing, is advised, and symptomatic treatment should be given. — 
New York Medical Journal. 



178 Care of Children and Mothers 

AFTERTHOUGHTS ON THE EPIDEMIC OP INFANTILE 
PARALYSIS 

By Beverley Robinson, M.D., New York 

Despite the fact that there was much search after the spe- 
cific cause of the late terrible outbreak, nothing convincing was 
found. We are still obliged to confess our ignorance and to 
recur to the time-honored statement that an epidemic influence 
has prevailed. The proof is, as we all know, that cases appear 
suddenly in widely separated tracts of country; that in some 
cases children, young men and women, and occasionally adults 
of a certain age, have been attacked; that not infrequently there 
is no evidence that a possible human carrier of the disease can 
account for it; that healthy children who are most carefully 
looked after in every rational way take the disease, and not 
merely neglected children or those of poor parents. 

No system of quarantine, even the most rigid, has prevented 
the disease from attacking persons at a given time. In all these 
particulars, and others, it is closely allied, in my judgment, with 
the grippe. Again, so far as many symptoms are concerned, it 
more closely resembles the grippe than any other known affec- 
tion. True it is that the site of the disease, after a few days, is 
especially the spinal cord and causes the paralytic symptoms, 
which are lasting and disabling, or, indeed, rapidly fatal. Even 
this may merely be a seat of a poison like that of grippe. 

So far as precautionary measures exist, I see no reason to 
change what is rational in the case of both diseases. Manifestly, 
when the symptoms of disease are present, it is wisdom to pre- 
vent bodily contact with those who are well, and when an epi- 
demic prevails in a known locality, it is sensible, sometimes and 
when conditions permit, to leave such a place for a time. But 
this does not mean that there should be an unreasonable stam- 
pede and that everyone who can afford it should seek safety in 
flight. In the first place, there is no assured safety by so doing, 
simply because the disease seeks susceptible people and, for 
some unknown reason, may attack them soon in the very place 
they have gone to for safety. Not a few facts prove this. I 
have not now in mind instances where the disease developed in 
a patient who brought it from the infected region whence he 
came. I mean instances where, after several weeks' absence 
from an affected place, the child was stricken with spinal 
paralysis. 



Infantile Paralysis 179 

I am still of the opinion that, by intelligent treatment at the 
beginning of the disease, its worst effects may be warded off, or 
appear in only a relatively small proportion of cases. 

To me, the simplest and probably the most effective treat- 
ment in the beginning of the disease, or as a preventive, is the 
internal use of ammonium salicylate. This remedy may be sup- 
plemented by the local use of carbolated petrolatum introduced 
into the nares, night and morning. The employment of im- 
munized blood serum injected into the spinal canal has evidently 
been of great service. But the supply is necessarily limited, and 
it should be given only by an expert and after a very careful 
examination of the blood donor by a physician of wide experience; 
otherwise much harm may result. Obviously this treatment could 
not now be given properly, or at all, in many country villages, 
or isolated regions. The treatment I have recommended may be 
used by any physician when first called to the case, would do no 
harm in any event, and might help save many lives, or at least 
might prevent the worst after-features of the case. Even if it is 
not so curative as blood serum, it would supplement the latter, 
and, whenever this could not be obtained, would be a saving help 
in time of greatest need. 

The ammonium salicylate has been more valuable to me in 
the treatment of grippe than any other remedy that I have tried 
— and I still hope everything from its wider use, if another 
epidemic of infantile paralysis occurs. I plead for it very earn- 
estly, as both preventive and curative. To me, the daily reports 
from the hospitals of what the physicians are doing are very 
unfortunate, as they tend to keep alive a condition of great 
mental anxiety and dread which is not wholly justified by the 
facts. 

Much of the treatment which has been employed in hospitals 
is experimental, and how much of it will remain an acquisition 
of value is not yet known. Meanwhile we should be loath to 
abandon a treatment which has proved itself so valuable, inno- 
cent, and simple in a similar disease.— New York Medical Journal. 



On July 5, 1915 ? in the New York Evening Journal, Dr. 
Bolduan, director of public education of the health depart- 
ment, and Dr. Simon Flexner, director of the Rockefeller 
Institute, told the people how to detect infantile paralysis 
and how to ward off the disease. Their advice follows : 



180 Care op Children and Mothers 

HOW TO DETECT IT 

The first symptoms are fever, bowel disturbances, headache, 
and irritability. 

After a few hours, pains develop, usually in the lower part 
of the legs and in the feet. 

Sometimes there are also pains in the region of the spine, 
in the arms and neck — stiff neck. 

Within twelve hours the patient is unable to move his arms 
and legs., and sometimes cannot talk. 

Vomiting, delirium, twitching, and convulsions accompany 
the progress of the disease. 

A temperature of from 100 to 106 degrees lasts two or three 
days. 

Sometimes, but rarely, the patient has chills, sore throat, 
and skin eruptions. 

Health is no protection. Often children go to bed appar- 
ently well, and awake in the night with the first symptoms, and 
are partly paralyzed by morning. 

HOW YOU MAY AVOID CONTRACTING IT 

Cleanliness is the only known preventive. 

The isolation of children in the house is next in importance. 

Have children wash their hands and faces often. 

Avoid buying candy, ice-cream, and fruits which are eaten 
without being cooked, from peddlers and storekeepers who are 
not careful of their wares. 

Do not kiss children on their mouths. 

Keep their noses clean. This applies especially to young 
babies. 

Do not cough in their faces. 

Protect them from flies. 

'The germs of this disease, which are so small that they 
cannot be seen with microscopes and which pass through germ 
filters, almost always enter the bodies of their victims through 
the mucous membranes of the nose and throat. 

HOW TO AVOID SPREADING IT 

Keep children away from their mates in the streets or at 
moving-picture shows. 

Report all cases at once to the Board of Health, so that the 
city's doctors can immediately investigate and remove the patients 
to hospitals. 

There are 1,500 hospital beds available for them in wards 
where they can be isolated. 



Infantile Paralysis 181 

Adults are not free from the disease. If your hands are 
dirty, or if you are not careful about the preparation of your 
children's food, remember that you can give your little ones the 
disease as readily as can outsiders." 



CAUSE AND CURB FOR INFANTILE PARALYSIS 
Propounded by Dr. Frederick W. Collins, Newark, N. J. 
Dr. Collins has issued the following statement regard- 
ing the cause and treatment of the disease : 

Cause: Fermentation in the intestines, affecting the epi- 
gastric or solar plexus, which irritates the great splanchnic and 
its branches, the least and lesser splanchnics. This fermentation 
in the intestines causes these nerves to become irritated, and in 
turn irritates the muscles, causing them to contract or constrict. 
This in turn causes the ligaments to which the muscles are 
attached to contract and draw the vertebrae together, impinging 
the nerves that emit from the intervertebral foramina. This 
causes a loss of motor function, hence the paralysis. 

The tenth cranial nerve, known as the pneumogastric, is 
also affected, as this nerve also supplies the solar plexus. It 
transmits directly to the brain and causes the symptoms of 
lassitude, refusal of child to play as usual, loss of appetite accom- 
panied by fever, and, at various stages, inability to use arms and 
legs. 

This disease is not caused by the invasion of any germs. 
When fermentation takes place in the intestines, when a per- 
son's blood and all the fluids of the body are charged with tox- 
emia from the putrefaction in the intestinal tract, caused by eat- 
ing too many starches, and the electromagnetic condition of the 
atmosphere becomes favorable for fermentation to take place, we 
then have an epidemic, and if the intestinal tract is examined, 
you will find all the kinds of germs you are looking for. 

Cure — Treatment : 

First. — Warm enemas, using a pint to two quarts of water 
with castile soap or tablespoon of glycerin in the water. 

Second. — Chiropractic adjustments at C. P. to reach the great 
splanchnic nerves, K. P. to reach the least and lesser splanchnics, 
L. P. P. to reach the great sciatic nerves or adjust the sacro- 
iliac articulation; at P. to reach the vagus nerve through the 
superior cervical ganglia. 

Third. — Rectal dilation with the finger, inhibiting the 
"myelin nerves." These nerves are four in number, consisting of 



182 Care of Children and Mothers 

a pair on either side, and are commonly called in anatomy 
"coccygeal nerves." Of these two pairs of nerves, situated laterally 
upon the sides of the spinal cords, one of each pair arises from 
the pineal gland, while the other two, one on either side, have 
their cranial origin from the pituitary body. Both the myelin 
sheath and the arachonoidal covering of the spinal cord are com- 
posed of nerve tissue. 

The union of the myelin nerves from cord and brain, the 
gangliated cord of the sympathetic, and the downward stream 
or white rami communicates in the coccygeal ganglia, makes this 
the most important nervous system. The two gangliated cords 
of the sympathetic extend from the base of the brain downward 
on either side and slightly in from the spinal column to the 
coccygeal ganglion, which is their lower commiseural ganglion, 
known as the ganglion of impar. Pressure scientifically applied 
through the rectum will increase the circulation and stimulate 
the entire nervous system. 

Fourth. — Warm magnesia-sulphate sponge-baths at the neu- 
tral temperature over the entire body, particularly the spine and 
abdomen, will dissolve the toxins and neutralize the blood stream, 
followed by shocking the spine with cold compress for three 
seconds, and cool compress on abdomen. 

Fifth. — Osteopathic treatment to the posterior spinal mus- 
cles, intercostals, arms and legs, to promote circulation and 
remove stasis. 

Sixth. — Fruit juice and milk diet for infants. Fresh fruit 
and raw vegetables, with bran or whole-wheat bread, for children. 
If infants are nursing, the mother should eat plenty of fresh 
fruit, whole-wheat or bran bread, raw vegetables, drink raw milk 
fresh, with water, equal parts. 

The above treatment will cure, and may be applied twice 
daily, morning and afternoon, with the exception of the chiro- 
practic adjustments. They should be given once daily. The 
above treatment will save the child's life, and the usual length 
of time for a cure is one day to seven months. — From Roseville 
Chronicle. 

* * # 

Symptoms. — The disease begins suddenly, with spinal aching, 
malaise, and a fever of 100 to 102 degrees. The fever lasts from 
two to five days, during which time the skin is dry and hot, the 
tongue may be coated, the urine is scanty and highly colored, 
the bowels are constipated, but occasionally there is diarrhea, 
the appetite is poor, and vomiting may be present. Within a few 
days it will be noticed that the lower limbs are paralyzed, or 



Infantile Paralysis 183 

possibly all four extremities, depending upon the part of the 
cord affected. As a rule, the bladder and rectum are not 
affected, and there is no anesthesia, or, if present, is only tem- 
porary. During the first few days there is more or less spinal 
pain radiating into the legs. This is a flaccid paralysis, and is 
more noticeable in the muscles below the knee than in those of 
the thigh, and the anterior tibial muscles are especially affected, 
permitting the characteristic foot drop, so common to infantile 
paralysis. The affected extremities rapidly undergo atrophy or 
wasting, making the leg long and slender. The paralysis may 
subside or partially recover in the extremities least affected, 
leaving the one extremity totally paralyzed. This is usually the 
right leg. It fails to grow and usually becomes deformed, the 
child becoming club-footed; any of the forms of talipes devel- 
oping. 

If the leg should only be partially paralyzed, or if he should 
wear a brace in walking, a lateral curvature of the spine with a 
tilting of the pelvis will develop, because the affected limb will 
be shorter than the one on the unaffected side. This curvature 
is usually located in the lumbar region and is purely adaptative. 
All that is required to remove such a curvature is to give a 
specific adjustment that will remove the paralysis and restore 
normal function to the legs. When in the sitting position the 
spine will straighten out, unless there should be ankylosis. 

Infantile paralysis differs from myelitis in that the sensory 
function is not involved, there are no bed sores, there is no 
vesical nor rectal anesthesia, there is no girdle sensation, and the 
condition is usually unilateral. 

It differs from peripheral neuritis in that persistent pain 
and tenderness is absent, is unilateral, while multiple neuritis 
is bilateral, and the De R. appears late in infantile paralysis, 
while it appears early in neuritis. Atrophy occurs more rap- 
idly and to a greater extent in infantile paralysis than in 
neuritis. — Chiropractic Symptomatology. 

* * # 

A CASE TREATED BY DR. F. W. COLLINS 

Thursday, July 27, 1916 

Dr. F. W. Collins, of 122 Roseville Avenue, Newark, N. J., 

was called in to see Albert David, age seven years, at 36 Sorrento 

Street, Irvington, N. J. 

Condition as follows: Both arms paralyzed, right leg par- 
alyzed, left toes paralyzed, neck stiff, eyelids closed, and eyeballs 
glassy, the sign of death. 



184 Care of Children and Mothers 

Dr. P. W. Collins worked three hours, and applied the follow- 
ing treatment: 

1. Two warm enemas. 

2. Hot compresses to neck. 

3. Chiropractic adjustments, at P., C. P., K. P. Rorated 
lumbars and loosened up sacrum. 

4. Applied hot compresses to chest and abdomen, wrung 
out in hot Epsom water. Bathed arms and legs with hot Epsom 
water for half-hour. 

5. Placed him in prone position, and applied hot compresses 
to back and thighs for about ten minutes; then shocked the spine 
with cold towels. 

6. Placed him in dorsal position, and gave rectal dilation 
for one minute, and child discharged rotten fecal matter; color 
black and green. Gave another dilation; child discharged again. 
Gave another dilation for five minutes, and there was no dis- 
charge. 

7. Applied cold compress on abdomen and hot one on chest. 
Bathed the legs with hot Epsom water, and arms. At the end 
of the first hour he opened his eyes and smiled. In another half- 
hour he moved his hands and brushed a fly from his forehead. 
In two hours he was able to move the toes on the left foot. 

The above treatment was continued daily. On August 4 was 
in good spirits, playing with blocks, and sitting up. There is lots 
of life in the right leg, and expect to have him move it in a few 
days. Also wrapped his arms and legs in Epsom compresses, 
and covered with warm blankets. 

On July 28 the following notice was sent to the Board of 
Health in Irvington, N. J. This was done, not because it was 
necessary, or to save the child's life, or from fear of any con- 
tagion, but to comply with the Board of Health rules: 

"President of the Board of Health of Irvington, N. J. 

"Dear Doctor: Last night I was called to attend the son of 
Ferd. David, at 36 Sorrento Street, Irvington, N. J. I found the 
child in the following condition: Motor function lost in both 
arms and right leg; feverish; muscles all contracted; eyelids 
closed. On examination, eyeballs were glassy. Applied restora- 
tive measures, and in one hour the boy opened his eyes and was 
able to raise arms over head. Visited him tonight, and found 
him improved greatly, but the right leg had no motion. Gave 
him treatment, and left him in good condition. I think it 
advisable to leave the child at home, but to quarantine the house 



Infantile Paralysis 185 

and thoroughly disinfect same. I am at your service, and beg 
to remain, 

"Fraternally yours, 

(Signed) "Dr. F. W. Collins." 

Mr. David states that when Dr. Christian called from the 
Board of Health, he put on a long gown and cap, refused to touch 
the child, and kept away from Mrs. David. Washed his hands 
before leaving with antiseptic tablets, and refused a nice, clean 
towel, saying he was afraid to catch the germs. Took out a 
mussed handkerchief from his pocket, and dried his hands on 
that. 

I have quoted and written so extensively on the sub- 
ject of Infantile Paralysis in order to show how little 
is known about the specific cause of the disease. The 
truth of the matter is that there is no specific cause. 
Cause resolves itself into multitudinous factors, all of 
which are necessary to evolve a typical case. If a spe- 
cific germ is ever found, it will be beholden to, and de- 
pendent on, all other factors, the major portion of which 
must precede it to prepare a suitable habitat for its 
metamorphosis; for, no doubt, this particular germ, like 
all other pathological germs, must wait upon a suitable 
environment to give it specificity ; and when the environ- 
ment dissolves — becomes analyzed — and the elements re- 
turn to their source, its cause of specificity is gone — it 
ceases to be specific. 

We can well afford to give up the notion of a specific 
cause, when to believe it works hardship to all who have 
not the disease, as well as to those who have it. 

The health board's requirements, so long as a disease 
is believed to be contagious, work great hardship to the 
people who are free from disease. This disease is no 
longer believed to be contagious, and only the ultra- 
scientific believe it to be infectious. Soon we may expect 
to get on a sane basis of belief regarding this disease. 
Then something new of a contagious nature will have to 



186 Care of Children and Mothers 

be discovered to give the medical world a new thrill — a 
new shock — and a new opportunity to show the people, 
who have any discernment, how inane and stupid the aver- 
age scientific doctor is. 

Dr. Collins met with the success that always accom- 
panies a sort of rough-and-tumble nursing. By "rough- 
and-tumble" I mean doing anything that appears neces- 
sary to relieve a patient, regardless of the cause of the 
disease. The rough-and-tumble style of treating patients 
is good enough when it ends well, but there are many 
helpless victims of this style of practice. When the dan- 
gerous type of "regular" doctor undertakes to treat pa- 
tients for symptoms, relief is given with the hypodermic. 
Then we see those with heart disease shocked to death; 
those w^ith congestive headaches killed with morphine; 
the cough of pneumonia stopped with drugs that should 
never be given, resulting in death. And this haphazard 
style of relief is carried on to an appalling extent, with 
no hope that the people will ever know enough to protect 
themselves against such professional inefficiency. 

Dr. Collins' treatment is not fraught with so much 
danger. However, novices and the heavy-handed who 
undertake his treatment will kill a few; for the manipu- 
lations which he recommends may be overworked. I do 
not believe there is anything specific about his treatment. 
His manipulations are as cut and dried as the "regular's" 
habit of whipping out his hypodermic. Securing a 
thorough cleaning-out of the bowels is the keynote to his 
success. The spinal stimulation, when not too heroic, 
will certainly bring relief to nerve tension and give rest 
to the little sufferers. His salts bath no doubt is sooth- 
ing and helps allay nerve irritation, thereby parrying 
much irritation on its way to the spine. 

I believe the best physicians who have been treating 
this disease in the East recognize the importance of 
clearing out the bowels as the first step to relief. From 



Infantile Paralysis 187 

the reports, I judge the intestinal canal is the location of 
the primary disease, and the spinal cord and paralyiss 
secondary. 

This is true of epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis. 
Hence, the sooner the alimentary canal is cleared out, and 
kept clear, the less shock there will be to go to the spine. 

If the laboratory experts would forget the nose as the 
point of ingress, and the fly as carrier, and get out search- 
warrants for the intestinal canal, they would not be long 
in finding where the infection originates. 

No doubt in some cases the putrefaction in the bowels 
takes place so suddenly that it acts like a fulminant, 
and the infection is so sudden and profound that it works 
disintegration to the nerve centers immediately. In a few 
hours — in one night — a child is converted into a helpless 
cripple for life, or possibly killed. 

Treatment. — When an epidemic of the nature of infan- 
tile paralysis is on, every sick child should be given the 
benefit of the doubt, and have its bowels thoroughly 
cleared out by the use of mineral water and enemas. 
All feeding should stop until it is quite certain that the 
child is safe. 

If it were possible to have the proper remedies ap- 
plied early enough, the disease could be checked before 
the spine is injured. But this is impossible, unless parents 
are instructed in knowing what to do, and would then be 
expert enough to do it. If this could be done, many lives 
would be saved, and many would escape deformity. 

Prevention is the only real safeguard. Healthy chil- 
dren should be fed breakfast food for breakfast — no 
sugar ; fruit — any fresh fruit — for the noon meal ; whole- 
wheat bread, butter, and milk for the evening meal. 
About twice a week a combination salad, an egg, cottage 
cheese, and milk may be taken for the evening meal. 



188 Care op Children and Mothers 

Babies under two years old should be kept on milk. 
Where it is possible, fresh fruit may be given with the 
milk. In the winter time the sweet fruits should be used 
with the milk — raisins, dates, or figs; one or two ounces 
with the milk. 

When the weather is hot, milk and fresh fruit should 
be about the limit of variety. Indeed, during endemics 
and epidemics, the less variety of food eaten, the better. 

That some children are more inclined to take the dis- 
ease than others is partly due to inheritance and partly 
to wrong daily life. To prevent inheriting a low resist- 
ing power, a broader moral education will have to be 
given prospective parents. So long as fathers and mothers 
believe that generation is something that is governed by 
chance, and that they have nothing to do with creation, 
the populating of the earth with cripples, both of body 
and of mind, will go on. Creators must know their re- 
sponsibility, and assume it with the right spirit, before 
the creating of incorrigible children will end. Too much 
is left to the Lord. 

So long as fathers and mothers think that they can 
live in any way ; indulge in stimulants of all kinds ; allow 
their sensual natures to run away with them; allow 
lasciviousness to run riot until their nerve centers take 
on premature aging — until progressive paralysis shadows 
them like a veritable nemesis — such diseases as infantile 
paralysis will be one of the curses of civilization. 

Mothers who curse their children before birth by desir- 
ing to destroy them, and who go so far as to use drugs 
to force abortion, or attempt to produce abortion with 
mechanical means, need not be surprised if their children 
are incorrigible from perverted mental and physical de- 
velopment. 

Those women who must have a few years of freedom 
from childbirth in which to enjoy life before settling down 
to virtuous motherhood, need not be surprised if they. 



Vaccination 189 

cultivate a state of body and mind that will be trans- 
mitted to their children as a neurosis or psycho-neurosis.* 

VACCINATIONf 

"What shall I do when my children are sent home 
from school because they are not vaccinated ?" 

This question, often received by me, is hard to answer 
by one who would comply with the law and order for the 
sake of social peace and unity. 

The health and life of a son or daughter are of greater 
importance than law and order. When a parent has 
evolved out of the vaccination superstition, he must look 
upon it as a menace to health and life; hence, when this 
menace threatens, nothing higher than ordinary animal 
instinct will compel him to protect his own. 

A mind that could not admire an animal for protecting 
its young — that would not have a little compunction at 
killing a tigress for protecting her young— is much lower 
in natural ethics than can be conceived of any brute. 
The parent who is abused by so-called law and order for 



♦Neurosis — nervous derangement; psycho-neurosis — mental 
derangement unaccompanied by bodily disorder (cerebral paraly- 
sis). 

fThose who wish to know something about the damage that 
compulsory vaccination is doing in the United States should send 
fifty cents to subscribe for the Truth Teller, a periodical published 
semi-monthly by the Truth Teller Publishing Company, Battle 
Creek, Michigan. This organ is a periodical brought out by the 
Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League of Ohio, and is the official 
organ of the Anti-Vaccination League of New York. I do not 
recommend the decidedly partisan characteristics of this organ, 
but it will give any fair-minded person an idea of what is going 
on in the world that is suppressed by the opposition. Truth, as 
a rule, lies somewhere between two opposing advocates. It is 
positively unreasonable to expect the truth to be published by the 
pro-vaccinators, and it would be reasonable to believe that the 
anti-vaccinationists will allow their prejudice to exaggerate. 



190 Care of Children and Mothers 

protecting his child against the outrages of a superstition 
he has outgrown would be derelict if he did not protest; 
and, if the protestations of civilization fail, then he cer- 
tainly would have the natural — moral — right to resort 
to the manner and means of protection vouchsafed to the 
aboriginal man or animal. There are natural rights 
which are inviolable, and the right to protect "life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is the most impor- 
tant. In fact, it is the first law of nature. 

It is a man's social duty. "If it be possible, as much 
as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men" (Eom. 12 :18). 
But it should not be forgotten that : "But if any provide 
not for his own, and especially for those of his own 
house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an 
infidel" (Tim. 5:8). Can there be a greater provision 
than for that of health and life ? 

All nature cries out against the mother who would 
forsake her child. And when she will not, and asks pro- 
tection against medical superstition, what answer am I 
to give her when she appeals to me for advice? Am I to 
betray her trust and turn her over to medical vandalism? 
For that is what vaccination, and other immunizers of 
that ilk, mean. 

But if my readers want the truth on this subject, they 
must know something of both sides ; and, as the medical 
profession, backed by legislation, is advocating vaccina- 
tion — and not only advocating it, but compelling it, where 
it is possible — this sort of education is taught and felt 
in every community ; hence laymen should read something 
about the other side. 

Medicine is too speculative — too uncertain — to be 
backed by law and forced upon the people. No less a per- 
sonage than Cardinal Gibbons has declared: 

What do the things that Dr. Osier preaches stand for? Fifty 
years hence all his teachings may be overthrown by new dis- 
coveries. His whole doctrine is based on theory. Fifty years 



Vaccination 191 

ago the scientists of that day imagined they knew all that was 
to be known of medicine; yet today their conclusions are over- 
thrown by later discoveries. 

It is true that the cardinal is not a physician ; but it 
does not require a physician, pope, or prelate to read 
and interpret history. 

When it is easily proved that scientific medicine, as 
interpreted by the rank and file of modern medical sci- 
entists, is, at best, conjecture and guess-work, the people 
have a right to, and should, protest against the state and 
government going into partnership with the profession 
for the purpose of forcing experimentation; for that is 
all there is to theory and practice as propounded by the 
best medical colleges in this, and any other, country. 

It will be my endeavor to help my readers to a rational 
belief on this subject. The rabid pro-vaccinators are not 
at all loath to declare those who oppose vaccination igno- 
rant, stupid, dishonest, and disloyal. Intrenched custom 
and convention are always positive that they are right 
on all subjects that they advocate. The proselytes to 
established beliefs are not required to know anything 
positively on the subject. All they need to do is to accept 
the faith and believe that those who have gone before 
them knew the truth. This has been going on in regard 
to vaccination so many years that advocates of this health- 
destroying, so-called preventive are believers in the system, 
without proof, except that what everybody believes must 
be true.* This is the strongest argument that is brought 
out by any of the advocates of vaccination. Statistics 
on this subject are "framed up" for a purpose. 



♦Is it not a fact that majorities are usually wrong? If so, 
why? Because majorities do not need proof — what everybody 
"believes must be true. This was the evidence that convicted and 
put to death witches, and forced Galilei to abjure the Copernican 
theory, and in all times has forced obeisance from cowards and 
fools. 



192 Oare op Children and Mothers 

Those who wish more information on this subject 
should read Alfred Wallace's book, "The Wonderful Cen- 
tury." 

The medical profession is very busy in its endeavor to 
stamp out such diseases as tuberculosis, syphilis, cancer, 
pellagra, and other so-called blood diseases. The profes- 
sion admits that most of these diseases are increasing all 
the time, and it appeals to the legislatures of the various 
states to help in stamping out these dread diseases. Is 
this not the quintessence of irony, when this same medical 
profession, before securing this last-craved legislation, 
has secured legislation for the purpose of forcing the peo- 
ple to aid it (the profession) in building the very diseases 
that it wishes to stamp out by its so-called immuniza- 
tion practice — vaccination, etc. ? There is no single cause 
that is more active and potent for saddling upon the 
people these so-called infectious and contagious diseases 
than the much-advocated superstition known as vaccina- 
tion, or the so-called preventive of smallpox. Perhaps it 
would interest those who are not acquainted with Mr. 
Spencer's opinion to know what he has to say on the 
subject of vaccination: 

"When once you interfere with the order of nature, there is 
no knowing where the results will end," was the remark made 
in my presence by a distinguished biologist. There immediately 
escaped from him an expression of vexation at his lack of reti- 
cence; for he saw the various uses I might make of the ad- 
mission. 

Jenner and his disciples have assumed that, when the vaccine 
virus has passed through a patient's system, he is safe, or com- 
paratively safe, against smallpox, and that there the matter 
ends. I will not here say anything for or against this assump- 
tion.* I merely propose to show that there the matter does not 

♦Except, indeed, by quoting the statement of a well-known man, 
Mr. Kegan Paul, the publisher, respecting his own experience. In his 
"Memoirs" (pp. 260-61) he says, respecting his smallpox when adult: 
"I had had smallpox when a child, in spite of vaccination, and had 
been vaccinated but a short time before. I am the third of my own 
immediate family who have had smallpox twice, and with whom 
vaccination has always taken." 



Vaccination 193 

end. The interference with the order of nature has various con- 
sequences other than that counted upon. Some have been made 
known. 

A ParMamentary Return issued in 1880 (No. 392) shows 
that, comparing the quinquennial periods 1847-1851 and 1874-1878, 
there was in the latter a diminution in the deaths from all causes 
of infants under one year old of 6, GOO per million births per 
annum; while the mortality caused by eight specified diseases, 
either directly communicable or exacerbated by the effects of 
vaccination, increased from 20,524 to 41,353 per million births per 
annum — more than double. It is clear that far more were killed 
by these other diseases than were saved from smallpox.* 

To the communication of diseases thus demonstrated must 
be added accompanying effects. It is held that the immunity 
produced by vaccination implies some change in the components 
of the body — a necessary assumption. But, now, if the substances 
composing the body, solid or liquid or both, have been so mod- 
ified as to leave them no longer liable to smallpox, is the modi- 
fication otherwise inoperative? Will anyone dare to say that it 
produces no further effect than that of shielding the patient 
from a particular disease? You cannot change the constitution 
in relation to one invading agent and leave it unchanged in regard 
to all other invading agents. 

What must the change be? There are cases of unhealthy 
persons in whom a serious disease, as typhoid fever, is followed 
by improved health. But these are not normal cases; if they 
were, a healthy person would become more healthy by having a 
succession of diseases. Hence, as a constitution modified by vac- 
cination is not made more able to resist perturbing influences 
in general, it must be made less able. Heat and cold and wet 
and atmospheric changes tend ever to disturb the balance, as do 
also various foods, excessive exertion, mental strain. We have 
no means of measuring alterations in resisting power, and hence 
they commonly pass unremarked. There are, however, evidences 
of a general relative debility. Measles is a severer disease than it 
used to be, and deaths from it are very numerous. Influenza 



*This was in the days of arm-to-arm vaccination, when medical 
men were certain that other diseases (syphilis, for instance) could not 
be communicated through the vaccine virus. Anyone who looks into 
the Transactions of the Epidemiological Society of some thirty years 
ago will find that they were suddenly convinced to the contrary by a 
dreadful case of wholesale syphilization. In these days of calf-lymph 
vaccination such dangers are excluded; not that of bovine tuberculosis, 
however. But I name the fact as showing what amount of faith is to 
be placed in medical opinion. 



194 Care of Children and Mothers 

yields proof. Sixty years ago, when at long intervals an epi- 
demic occurred, it seized but few, was not severe, and left no 
serious sequelae; now it is permanently established, affects multi- 
tudes in extreme forms, and often leaves damaged constitutions. 
The disease is the same, but there is less ability to withstand it. 
There are other significant facts. It is a familiar biological 
truth that the organs of sense and the teeth arise out of the 
dermal layer of the embryo. Hence abnormalities affect all of 
them: Blue-eyed cats are deaf, and hairless dogs have imperfect 
teeth. ("Origin of Species," Chap. I.) The like holds of consti- 
tutional abnormalities caused by disease. Syphilis in its earlier 
stages is a skin disease. When it is inherited, the effects are 
malformation of teeth, and in later years iritis (inflammation of 
the iris). Kindred relations hold with other skin diseases: in- 
stance the fact that scarlet fever is often accompanied by loosen- 
ing of the teeth, and the fact that with measles often go disorders 
— sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent — of both eyes and 
ears. May it not be thus with another skin disease — that which 
vaccination gives? If so, we have an explanation of the frightful 
degeneracy of teeth among young people in recent times; and we 
need not wonder at the prevalence of weak and defective eyes 
among them. Be these suggestions true or not, one thing is 
certain: the assumption that vaccination changes the constitution 
in relation to smallpox, and does not otherwise change it, is 
sheer folly.* 

I have quoted rather extensively from Herbert Spen- 
cer's "Facts and Comments/'t because this man was a rec- 
ognized philosopher, and had shown by his erudition that 
he had been more capable than the statisticians in arriv- 
ing at facts from accumulated data. It is one thing to 
investigate reports, and quite another thing to arrive at 
unbiased opinion. 



*A high authority, Sir James Paget, in his Lectures (4th ed\, p. 39) 
says: "After the vaccine and other infections or inoculable diseases, 
it is, most probably, not the tissues alone, but the blood as much or 
more than they, in which the altered state is maintained; and in many 
cases it would seem that, whatever materials are added to the blood, 
the stamp once impressed by one of these specific diseases is retained." 
Here is a distinct admission, or rather assertion, that the constitution 
is changed. Is it changed for the better? If not, it must be changed 
for the worse. 

tD. Appleton & Co., New York. 



Vaccination 195 

It takes larger men than average professional men to 
rise above partisanship — above the pettiness of creed and 
convention. It certainly takes larger men than those 
depending upon the paternalism of office to recognize 
truth when submitted to them in a lot of data requiring 
reasoning power and an unbiased perception for truth. 

In writing upon such a pronounced partisan subject 
as vaccination, it behooves the writer to select the best 
minds from which to quote. This I have done, but, on 
account of limited space, I am compelled to limit the 
number to those mentioned. 

I do not feel that anything I can say of my own per- 
sonal experience can add weight to what I have quoted. 
Those desiring more evidence should read all of what Mr. 
Wallace says on the subject of vaccination. 

I know that vaccination, and the theory on which it 
rests, are a medical delusion and are doing great harm. 
Only a short time ago someone, quite intelligent in other 
respects, canceled his subscription to the Philosophy of 
Health because he did not want to encourage my erro- 
neous opinions on vaccination. It has become a religion 
with some people. 

Those who would have normal children must under- 
stand that "strait is the gate and narrow the way that 
leadeth unto" normal "life, and few there be that find it." 

"Beware of false prophets" — those who are going to 
■find a germ that causes infantile paralysis, and a syn- 
thetic drug or serum that is to put the "kibosh" on the 
teachings of the Great Healer in his Sermon on the 
Mount, that "by their fruits ye shall know them. Do 
men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" 

Disease is the effect of broken law. "Every good tree 
bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth 
forth evil fruit." Parents who break down their health — 



196 Care of Children and Mothers 

undermine their vitality — must bring forth children lack- 
ing power. "By their fruits ye shall know them." 

Is there anything more absurd than to send a lot of 
scientists, with test-tubes, microscopes, and other instru- 
ments of precision, and with a battering-ram of 
$45,000,000, to tear down the truth which is as old as 
time, and against which "the gates of hell shall not pre- 
vail"? The victories they win are short-lived indeed. 
The corpse of one grand discovery is scarcely interred 
before the knell is sounding the passing of another; and 
we are told that these are all scientific discoveries, and, 
of course, backed hy the laws of our country. Satire, 
surely thou dost perch on the banner of medical science! 

That byrd ys not honest 
That fylyth hys owne nest. 

— Skelton. 

CHOLERA INFANTUM 

Definition. — Cholera infantum is an inflammatory dis- 
ease of the alimentary canal that prevails in the summer 
months, and in some localities it is the cause of more 
dread and anxiety to parents than any other disease 
peculiar to childhood, because it is fatal to so many of 
their little ones between the ages of one and two years. 

There are other diseases in the same class which 
should be known and understood; for, if they are not, 
they will be confounded with cholera infantum and cause 
unnecessary anxiety. They are called by various names, 
such as : gastro-intestinal catarrh, summer diarrhea, sum- 
mer complaint, and gastroenteritis. 

If the disease is confined to the stomach, it is called 
gastritis; if it involves the stomach and the bowels, it is 
known as gastroenteritis; if the small intestine is af- 
fected, without involving the stomach, it is enteritis: if 
there are copious discharges of mucus, the name applied is 
muco-enteritis ; if the disease affects the large intestine, 



Cholera Infantum 197 

as well as the small, it is called entero-colitis, ileocolitis, 
or diarrhea; if the rectum becomes involved, it is dys- 
entery. 

When the disease is located in the large intestine and 
rectum, it is usually more inflammatory in character 
than when located in the stomach and small intestine. 

Etiology. — The etiology or cause of cholera infantum is 
not one thing, nor a few things, but many things. 

A predisposition to stomach and bowel trouble in in- 
fants is often laid during the gestation period. Mothers 
often live in a haphazard way, aping custom, as uncon- 
scious as fools that their every act, thought, and deed 
not only shapes their own lives and destinies, but also the 
lives and destinies of unborn human beings whom they are 
calling into existence without their consent. 

Symptoms. — Cholera infantum is, as its name implies, 
cholera in infants. Its attack is sudden. There is great 
restlessness, accompanied by fever, the temperature rang- 
ing from 102 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Bowel dis- 
charges are accompanied with pain. To relieve these 
pains, the legs are drawn up to the abdomen. There is 
usually a bearing-down; the child strains more or less 
at stool, and gives expression of pain at each movement. 
Frequently, preceding the bowel movement, the child gags, 
or retches a mouthful of water or milk — the latter if 
there is any milk in the stomach. The sickness of the 
stomach increases gradually, as do all the symptoms, 
until the vomiting becomes frightfully severe; and by 
this time the child has lost all power to retain anything 
on its stomach. The emaciation is so rapid that the 
parents and friends give up all hope of saving their little 
darling after only a few hours of sickness. 

The bowels are sensitive to the touch, and are filled 
with gas. In some cases the gas is a severe complication, 
because it increases the suffering, causes an acceleration 



198 Care op Children and Mothers 

of the pulse and breathing, and a rise of the temperature. 
The breathing and heart action become greatly oppressed. 

The thirst is extreme. This is often mistaken for 
hunger, and food is given — greatly to the detriment of 
the child. In fact, this is the cause of much of the fatal- 
ity in this disease; it is here that the question of life or 
death is to be settled. The clinician — the real physician 
— fights a winning battle at this point; and it is here 
that the novice — the doctor who has his business yet to 
learn — ignominiously fails, and in his ignorance kills the 
patient. 

The vomiting is frequently the first symptom; theu 
restlessness increases every moment, and by the time the 
diarrhea is fully established everyone recognizes that the 
child is very seriously sick and is sinking rapidly. 

The stools may be yellow or whitish-yellow, or tinged 
with green, at first. In a very short time they become a 
grass-green, showing white lumps of milk curd. There 
is an excess of fluid, and some gas. When there is much 
gas, it causes the stools to look frothy. 

The disease may be severe enough to kill in twenty- 
four hours; or the symptoms may decline after the first 
twenty-four hours, and from this time on the child may 
convalesce. If the treatment and nursing are bad, the 
disease will pass into gastro-enteritis. 

Cholera infantum proper is of twenty-four hours' dura- 
tion. After that, if the disease is not cured, it assumes a 
more chronic type, such as muco-enteritis or entero- 
colitis. Digestion may be impaired for months. 

Some authors give the duration of cholera infantum 
as from six to eight days. Probably they are just as near 
right from their standpoint as I am from mine, and, if 
we understood each other, we might be of one opinion. 

After twenty-four hours, if the disease has not spent 
its force and the child is still alive, the bowel movements 
continue in frequency, and contain more mucus, and at 



Cholera Infantum 199 

times specks or very delicate streaks of blood. The fever 
remains about the same. The thirst is consuming — the 
child will put anything into its mouth. The restlessness 
is marked by a rolling of the head from side to side, and 
throwing the arms and legs from one place to another. 

Occasionally these cases start with convulsions, and 
quickly lapse into a stupor or comatose state, from which 
they gradually sink into death. Again, the stupor may 
be light, the eyes partly closed, and the child becomes 
more restless and cries at every bowel movement. 

In the middle states, where the summers are hot, 
children who have suffered a severe run of gastroenteritis, 
following a serious cholera infantum— and especially 
children who are cutting their teeth — are liable to have 
relapses, or to remain in a half-cured condition. They 
are neither well nor sick, and every few days, or every 
week or two, they are liable to a relapse, requiring several 
days of careful nursing to bring them back to their 
former half-sick state. The doctors of thirty to forty 
years ago did not pretend to cure these children; they 
congratulated themselves on being very successful if they 
could keep the little ones alive until the frost came in 
the fall. 

The tendency in these little patients is to lose more 
and more of their digestive power, so that finally the least 
variation from accustomed food brings on indigestion. 
Many appear not to have power to digest enough to keep 
them from starving to death. It is not uncommon, in 
the warm states, to see veritable skeletons — children re- 
duced to skin and bones — waiting for frost to come. But, 
unfortunately, death too often comes first. 

This disease presents types all the way from an at- 
tack that kills in twenty-four hours to a very light attack 
of indigestion; and, while the different types are given 
names which enable doctors to understand each other 
when describing their cases, it may be said that, from 



200 Care of Children and Mothers 

the lightest to the most intense form of the disease, tak- 
ing on all the different complications elsewhere named, 
they are all the same. The difference is simply a matter 
of intensity and location ; and, so far as the treatment is 
concerned, it must be based on a common etiology. 

It is the duty of every nursing mother to keep her 
system in as healthy a state as possible. If the mother 
is not in good health, and she is the source, and often the 
only source, of the child's food supply, how is it possible 
for the child to be well? No one would knowingly use the 
milk from a sick cow; then why use human milk under 
the same circumstances? 

Care of mothers. — If the children are fed from the 
breast, mothers should feel their responsibility and make 
any personal sacrifice necessary for the health of their 
children. To do otherwise is not human, and such mothers 
are unworthy of the responsibility of child-raising. 

Overeating, and eating rich, indigestible foods, must 
not be indulged in. Eating should be regular, and the 
food should be plain, and thoroughly masticated and in- 
salivated. There should be no eating between meals, nor 
drinking of tea, coffee, or light alcoholics, either for 
pleasure or for the purpose of increasing the flow of 
milk. 

Every day the mother should rest and avoid all forms 
of excitement. She should go to bed at nine o'clock and 
get up at six; then have a nap of thirty minutes or an 
hour in the middle of the day. She should take enough 
exercise for health — either two or three walks daily, or 
some other form of light exercise, or light forms of house- 
work. Idleness should be avoided; the mind and body 
should be employed all the time, but strenuous physical 
work should not be indulged in. Reading should be 
select: classical novels, history, biography, natural his- 
tory, essays, and the better poets. All reading should be 



Cholera Infantum 201 

of such a character as not to affect the emotions, and 
should be elevating and mind-strengthening. 

Poise is what all mothers should be ambitious to 
attain; for then they may hope to impart the same quali- 
ties to their children. Mothers who have neither self- 
control nor poise need not hope to have a desirable in- 
fluence over their children. It should be the ambition 
of all mothers to be successful in child-raising, and they 
should work diligently to know all that is necessary. 

Feeding. — 1 advocate the feeding of children from birth 
three times a day — no oftener. Never through the night. 

Since I differ so widely from the general plan of the 
profession, and the common practice of the people, in the 
matter of feeding young babes, perhaps I should give my 
reasons for so doing. Therefore I will say that, when I 
came out of college, I started to put into practice what 
I was taught by teachers and books. The frequent-feeding 
plan, and all other plans of caring for the little folk that 
were sanctioned by the best authorities, I adopted. My 
success, it is needless to say, was not satisfactory, or I 
should not have kept squirming about endeavoring to find 
a better plan. From the first patient I ever had to the 
last one, I will say that the nearer my treatment corre- 
sponded to the treatment I gave to young animals in my 
childhood, the better my results. As a small boy I had 
much experience with chickens, kittens, pups, rats, mice, 
and other animals. After storms I had many chickens to 
nurse back to life. It was no uncommon thing for me 
to rescue a chicken, a kitten, or a pup from the swill- 
barrel. To clean these animals, make them warm and 
comfortable, and nurse them back to full health, was one 
of the greatest joys of my child-life; and the experience 
I gained serves me to this day. I am free to confess that 
this child-experience was worth more to me, when I en- 
tered into the actual work of my profession, than all the 
knowledge I ever got out of books or lectures. This may 



202 Care of Children and Mothers 

not be very complimentary to medical science, and some 
may jump to the conclusion that my medical education is 
sadly deficient. But what people may think cannot pos- 
sibly change the truth of what I have stated. 

What did my childhood experience teach me? It 
taught me two or three fundamental therapeutic measures 
that will stand as solid as the universe, and will never be 
supplanted nor extinguished until time is no more. Those 
measures are: warmth, quiet, and abstinence. Those lit- 
tle animal patients required a comfortable, warm bed, and 
quiet. I learned that they would not do well if handled. 
Then followed the great lesson which humanity is so slow 
to accept; namely: These little animals would not eat 
until all shocks, irritations, and fevers were gone. These 
dumb animal patients could not be forced to eat. I 
learned that, when they took nourishment, it was a sure 
sign that they were getting well. These little patients 
were not worried about "starving to death." They would 
not take anything but water until very much better. 
Then, when they could stagger to their feet and take a 
little food, the amount was so small that, to my boyish 
mind, it was almost the same as not eating anything. 
But the small feeds were followed by others a little larger, 
until full health and the usual hunger returned. Neither 
the patients nor their doctor worried about ingesting 
enough food to supply the proper number of calories and 
the right number of grams of protein. 

I began to try to reason out why so many children 
should be sick and why so many should die. In the course 
of time, by close observation, I proved to my own satis- 
faction that there could be but one leading and all-domi- 
nating cause — and that was overeating or overfeeding. 
By easy stages I finally came to the conclusion that, if 
children are not handled — if they are left alone, as they 
should be — they will sleep about twenty-three hours out 
of twenty-four; and, if they are not disturbed, except to 



Cholera Infantum 203 

make them clean and comfortable, they do not awake 
oftener than about three times a day. Hence I do not 
hesitate to say that three times a day is as often as a 
child should be nursed; for those who are fed oftener 
must be awakened to be fed. If they are awake and 
fretting, it is because they have been abused in handling 
and feeding, and are in reality sick. 

Allow me to go on record in this matter as saying: 
If a child is awake and fretful, apparently demanding 
food every two hours or oftener, it is sick, and should be 
dealt with accordingly. 

Preventive treatment. — The first signs that should 
attract attention are those of finding particles of curd 
in the child's stools. This should receive immediate atten- 
tion. It is very foolish to wait for the child to get sick 
before doing anything; for, as surely as the feeding con- 
tinues (without change) in the way that has brought on 
the appearance of curd, the child will be made sick. Many 
children seem to be quite tolerant of this symptom, and 
will remain apparently well, even after the bowels are 
very constipated, and every bowel movement is a cheesy 
mass — a white curd, showing almost no digestion. How- 
ever, the evil day will come; and the longer it is in com- 
ing, the more difficult and tedious will be the recovery. 

The question of how much to feed, and how often, will 
never be settled; for there will be those who advocate 
feeding every two hours, and others every three hours, 
and others every four hours. Still others will contend 
that the child should be given food as often as it will take 
it, while again others will insist that it must be fed as 
often as it wants it — which to them means every time the 
child is restless or fretful. 

There is but one correct plan. It is impossible to say 
how much a child or an adult shall eat. The amount 
must vary in each individual case, and with each indi- 
vidual the amount must vary in accordance with the 



204 Care of Children and Mothers 

state of health, the activity of the body, and the atmos- 
pheric and thermal changes. 

If an infant is properly cared for from birth, it will 
not be awake oftener than two or three times — we will 
say three times — in twenty-four hours. This, then, T as- 
sume, is as often as nursing children should be fed. I 
have succeeded in influencing a few mothers to feed their 
babies according to this plan, and the results have been 
gratifying indeed. The children are smaller and very 
active, and much stronger and brighter than children fed 
in the ordinary way. 

I am compelled to compromise with most mothers, and 
permit four feeds a day. Then the majority will slip in 
an extra feed at night; which, of course, the baby has to 
pay for with occasional sick spells. 

Children fed three times a day will not be troubled 
with constipation, and will not have white curds in the 
discharges from their bowels. They may be given all 
they will take at each feeding, and they should have all 
the water they want between meals. Understand, please, 
that this feeding plan must start at birth, to experience 
the best results. 

Those fed four times a day should have fruit for the 
ten o'clock morning meal. At what age should they be 
fed fruit? They are old enough to be fed fruit juices when 
they will take them with a relish. 

Vegetable juices have been recommended in previous 
writings, but it is best not to use them before the second 
year — and not then unless there be a special requirement, 
which should be decided by the physician. Experience 
has taught me. 

Children at three months of age should be taking 
three regular meals each day — at six o'clock in the morn- 
ing, and at two and six in the afternoon — and a fruit- 
juice meal at ten in the forenoon. If the child refuses to 



Cholera Infantum 205 

take the juice, it may be too acid ; add water and try again, 
or try a fruit less acid. But as soon as it cultivates an 
appetite for the fruit juice, and can take enough to satisfy 
its hunger, it should have three regular nursings and one 
fruit meal each day. No child should ever be fed through 
the night. 

If a child grows thin and really loses weight after 
the second week, it will not be an indication that it is not 
fed often enough, but that the mother's milk is deficient 
in some of the important elements, or that she does not 
give enough. If the latter, the child should be allowed 
to nurse its mother until it has taken all she can give; 
then follow immediately with one, two, or more ounces 
of cow's or goat's milk. If possible, have the milk brought 
from the animal and fed to the child while it is warm. 

If it is proved that the mother's milk is, without 
doubt, devoid of proper nourishing qualities, or that it 
carries a taint of septic poisoning, caused by a suppurat- 
ing laceration of the neck of the womb that is slowly 
healing, or possibly refusing to heal, the child should be 
unhesitatingly taken from the breast and put on other 
food. 

The answer to the question, "How often should a 
child be nursed?" is, three or four times in tw T enty-four 
hours. "How much?" All it will take. If it takes too 
much, curd will appear in the bowel passages; then the 
amount must be lessened. If it does not get enough, the 
sign will be a gradual wasting — gradual loss in weight. 
This must be met by increasing the amount, not the fre- 
quency, of feeding. 

Reduce the food intake. — As soon as white curds show 
in the stools, the child's food supply must be reduced. 
If it is nursing the mother or wet-nurse, allow it only 
two-thirds of the time at breast that it has been given 
before. If this is not sufficient to clear the bowel dis- 
charges of curd, reduce the time to one-half; and, when 



206 Care of Children and Mothers 

the symptom has been overcome, gradually increase until 
it is taking the original quantity. However, if curds re- 
appear, reduce the food intake again. If the child is 
taking milk from the bottle, treat it in the same way. 

If the child is six months old or more, a very good 
plan is to give it the regular food night and morning, 
and at noon feed it fruit. Fresh blackberries are good. 
Run them through a fruit or vegetable mill, and then 
through a sieve, securing the pulp and juice without the 
seeds. Give the child all it will take. Grind pears, or 
other fruits that are not too tart. If lettuce is ground 
and mashed to a pulp, and mixed with fruit or toma- 
toes, it may be given to all children old enough to take 
it; and any child is old enough when it will take it and 
enjoy it. Such foods as this, given in the place of a 
regular meal, will strengthen digestion, and be antidotal 
to any tendency to fermentation. 

When the signs of indigestion have been neglected 
until diarrhea is brought on, all feeding must be stopped 
at once. If there is fever, a warm bath should be given. 
Just before the bath the bowels should be washed out 
with a warm enema — a teaspoonful of soda in a quart of 
water. After the bath the child should be rubbed from 
head to foot, especially the spine; and then it should be 
induced to sleep, if possible. If there is thirst, give water 
freely. If the child is not satisfied with water and de- 
mands food, give some fruit juice in water. If there is no 
fever, give the blackberries or dewberries. If the berries 
are not to be had, give orange juice or lemon juice and 
water, using a very little sugar with the lemon, but not 
with the other fruits. 

Keep other foods away until the bowels are all right, 
even if it requires two or three days, or even a week. 
Do not be afraid to keep food away from a sick child; for 
it will be getting well every minute that its regular food 



Cholera Infantum 207 

is kept away from it, and it is given water if there is 
fever, or fruit juice or fruit if there is no fever. 

The foregoing is as important advice as I shall give. 
If carried out boldly, decisively, uncompromisingly, and 
without wavering one iota, a cured child — victory — will 
be the reward. But if those in attendance are lacking in 
courage, and waver or compromise by allowing "just a 
little" food before the symptoms that demand the fast 
are cleared up, failure is sure; and, of course, the plan 
of treatment will be made responsible for the lack of 
courage, skill, or efficiency in carrying out the instruc- 
tions. 

My plan of treatment cannot fail. If those who under- 
take to treat the sick according to it fail to secure ideal 
results, it will be because they do not understand it, or be- 
cause they lack tact in securing the co-operation of those 
interested, or they do not feel the need of being thorough. 

Preparatory treatment — the sick-roorn. — The following 
advice regarding a separate room for the sick child can- 
not be carried out by many people; but when it is possible 
it should be done. Quiet must be had, even if children 
have to be sent away from home. 

The first thing to do, when a child falls ill with this or 
any other disease, is to prepare a comfortable bed, in a 
room as far away from the busy, noisy part of the house 
as possible; also as far from the street, its dirt and noise, 
as can be. The room should be light and airy, and pro- 
vided with a fireplace, so that the chill and dampness of a 
contingent rainy day may be overcome by a quick fire. 
The room must be one that can be thoroughly ventilated, 
and the windows must be wide-open day and night. See 
to it that the windows are not placed so that the gas from 
the neighbor's vent-pipe — what is called the "soil-pipe" — 
blows into the room. It would be well if the walls of the 
room were plain. When walls are decorated with figured 

14 



208 Care op Children and Mothers 

paper, nervous patients are inclined, when the temperature 
is high and the circulation rapid, or arterial pressure 
strong, to build in their imagination fantastic figures, 
which may lead a vivid imagination into more and more 
excitement, until co-ordination is lost and convulsions 
ensue. 

There should never be more than one person at a time 
in the room with a sick child. If possible, the mother 
should not be the nurse of her own child. The rule is that 
strangers can handle sick babies better than mothers can. 
This is especially true where the child is fed from the 
breast. It is an unfortunate fact that the majority of 
mothers are poor nurses. And there is another unfortu- 
nate fact to go along with the first fact ; namely, that these 
same mothers really believe they are good nurses. 

There is a foolish sentiment held by some mothers. 
They think that turning their babies over to a nurse shows 
a lack of motherly love. On the contrary, I think it shows 
a lack of good judgment when they do not. 

From the beginning to the end of the sickness one person 
should have charge of the child. If a nurse is employed, 
or the mother is to take charge, the matter should be defi- 
nitely settled. Where there are several to look after the 
nursing, and no one in particular, many things are neg- 
lected, and there is more or less confusion ; besides, there 
is often too much talking in the sick-room. 

To take proper care of a sick child requires all the time 
of one person. If the nursing is started right, and kept 
going in the right direction, the nurse will have all the 
time for sleep she needs, so that it will not be necessary 
to have a nurse for the day and one for the night. 

It is impossible to take the proper care of a sick child 
when it is in a living-room, or in a room opening into a 
living-room; for there is too much noise, talking, and ex- 



Cholera Infantum 209 

citement generally, all of which are opposite to the first 
requirement of a cure — namely, quiet. 

When anyone goes into a sick-room, it should be done 
so carefully that, if the child is asleep, it will not be awak- 
ened. Talking, when any is done, should be in an under- 
tone. Whispering is much more annoying than a low, 
natural tone. 

Visiting in the sick-room is low, ill-bred, and vulgar. 
There is no other situation that tests true politeness so 
surely as the sick-room, or the house in which there is sick- 
ness. The coarse, uncivil, and ill-bred go stamping about 
like blind horses. If they have anything to say, they say 
it at the top of their voices; and when they walk, or go 
from room to room, or up and down stairs, everyone in 
the house knows it. If they handle a book or paper, they 
get all the noise out of turning the leaves that is possible. 

It should be the desire of everyone about a house in 
which someone is sick to be as still as possible. 

The sick must have rest. Often it is a question of life 
or death. 

The patient's bed-dress,— The child should have several 
very simple garments made for it out of muslin or linen. 
They should be made on the order of a coat, to open in 
front, and in place of buttons a short piece of tape should 
be sewed every three or four inches on both sides, three or 
four inches from the edge. They should reach six inches 
or more below the feet. This garment will be very easy to 
put on. Open it; lay it on the bed so that its relation to 
the pillow will be such that, when the child is laid down 
with its head on the pillow, its arms may be slipped into 
the sleeves, and the tapes brought together and tied ; and 
the child will be dressed without being unnecessarilv han 
died. 



210 Care of Children and Mothers 

I have seen very sick children in full dress. Parents 
of such children have very crude ideas of comfort, and 
common-sense in all lines appears to be at a premium. 

Those who are used to the modern practice of medicine, 
with its doping, feeding, and ridiculously officious nursing, 
will think that my plan is criminal neglect — that I do not 
do anything. Never was there a greater mistake than to 
think so! When my plan is adopted at the beginning of 
any disease, it means the most potent and iron-clad pro- 
hibitions and inhibitions ; and, if carried out in a positive 
and exact manner, success is a foregone conclusion. My 
plan says to a disease process, such as we find in the dis- 
ease under consideration : "You have had your way until 
now. From this time on you are to obey me. It is true 
that you have a potentiality amounting to something — ■ 
much or little, as the case may be ; but it is not enough to 
continue your work for more than twenty-four to forty- 
eight hours, or whatever time is needed for you to spend 
what force you have without reinforcement. And this I 
absolutely refuse to permit you to have. You shall not 
renew your energy or supplies from any direction. You 
shall not have food out of which to manufacture poison. 
Hence you cannot replenish your stock, w r hich you are fast 
expending. And you shall not be assisted by anything that 
disturbs and breaks the rest of the patient, such as of- 
ficious nursing, unnecessary anxiety of parents and 
friends, bad air, and, neither last nor least, stimulation, 
irritation, and depression from drug action." 

Indeed, all this may be said to the disease process; and 
it is not bluff nor bombast, for it can be done in exactly 
that way. 

What do I mean by "officious nursing"? I mean that 
nurses are trained to get busy and stay busy. They catch 
the officiousness from doctors. The profession has evolved 
a trade habit. There is no poise nor dignity about the 



Cholera Infantum 211 

practice of medicine. The doctor is sent for. Of course, 
he is told to come in a hurry, and he does. He hurries to 
the patient, hurries through a perfunctory examination, 
hurriedly prescribes, and is hurriedly gone. The nurse 
gets busy and keeps busy. If she permits more than 
thirty minutes to pass without putting something on her 
record, she feels that she has not done her duty. She 
must have something to show when the doctor returns. To 
fill this requirement, there must be something doing. 
She cannot make a report of any kind every thirty min- 
utes without disturbing the patient more or less; hence 
the program is about as follows : First she gives drugs ; 
then she follows with nourishment; next she counts the 
pulse, takes the temperature, puts on a poultice, fills the 
hot-water bottle, rubs the abdomen, examines the tongue 
and reports on it, asks solicitous questions at all times, 
examines the skin for moisture and then for dryness, or 
sees if it is red ; she interpolates everything with her per- 
ambulations around and around the room; she tucks the 
bed-covering, adjusts the pillow, and much too often frus- 
trates every effort of the patient to get a little comfort and 
freedom by throwing the cover off and freeing the feet 
and hands. Every attempt of the little sufferer to get 
freedom is met with an insistent tucking-under, because 
there is danger of catching cold. Nature is a fool. She 
should consult the modern doctor and nurse before making 
any demands ! 

Nursing often amounts to eternal vigilance of an of- 
fensive character that robs the patient of all opportunity 
for rest. Nurses often make the mistake of believing it 
their duty to be everlastingly and eternally in evidence. 
But they are not to blame; they are taught to do as they 
do; hence it is the nursing profession I am criticizing — 
not the good women who are deluded into believing that 
killing people is nursing. Such nursing, with the usual 



212 Care of Children and Mothers 

feeding and dragging, puts the sick in a state of nervous 
excitement that drives away all possibility of sleep. 

If there is not much the matter to start with, such 
treatment will make much the matter in a very short time. 
When disease is treated right, it is on the order of lay- 
ing siege. The idea should be to cut off all possible rein- 
forcement; and then there is not much to do except to 
keep quiet and w T ait for the enemy — disease — to starve out. 

The first part of an attack of disease generally does not 
amount to much. Possibly not more than one-tenth of one 
per cent of all attacks of sickness are so virulent at the on- 
set as completely to overwhelm the patient's resistance 
and cause death. The majority of attacks of disease are so 
light that the patients will recover in spite of almost any 
ordinary bad treatment. Because of this fact, the world 
is full of fake cure-alls and visionary curing systems. lUit 
between the insignificant percentage that will die in spite 
of all, and the large percentage that no illogical curing 
plan can kill, there is a small percentage which needs skill. 
The skill required is the skill of aiding nature and remov- 
ing obstructions to her efforts at recovery. Hence I say 
that there is little to do; but that little is, as stated above, 
iron-clad prohibition and inhibitition, and it consists of: 
Do not feed the disease, and do not tear down the body by 
drugs and such nursing as I have described. 

Encouragement is always good treatment; and babies 
must have a great deal of rest and very gentle care. The 
voice of the nurse must be low and gentle. 

Rubbing very gently with the open hand is something 
that should be kept in mind ; for it is beneficial to all sick 
people. 

If the child is dressed as suggested above, it is an easy 
matter to slip the hand to the bowels, or back, and rub 
very lightly until it sleeps. The rubbing should be a cir- 
cular motion, with the ball or heel of the thumb represent- 



Cholera Infantum 213 

ing the center of pressure. As the circle is made and the 
hand sweeps across the spine, the ball of the thumb is 
pressed gently, and, as the hand comes back to the start- 
ing-point, the pressure is removed, so that there is a slight 
contact of the hand with the child's body. The circle is 
then started again. This time the hand drops an inch or 
two below the previous starting-point. This is repeated 
till the hand has traveled to the end of the spine. Then 
slip the hand back gently, but quickly, to the top of the 
spine or neck, and repeat. When this motion is perfected, 
the rubbing is so quieting that most patients can be put to 
sleep in ten to twenty minutes. 

Just as often as the sick child is restless, it must be 
rubbed. The first day or two it may need to be rubbed half 
the time, but all concerned may congratulate themselves 
that no harm is being done. As much cannot be said of 
the usual means employed to bring about quiet and sleep. 

When the temperature is above 103 degrees Fahrenheit, 
and the patient is very restless, ice should be pounded fine, 
put in a rubber bag, and the bag laid on the abdomen, 
after a towel has first been placed so that it will be be- 
tween the abdomen and the ice-bag. The ice should be 
kept on the bowels until the temperature goes down two 
degrees — down to 101. Then, if there is distention from 
gas, and evidence that there is much tenderness, a hot- 
water bag may be placed on the abdomen. Care must be 
exercised in making these applications to the abdomen; 
the bags of ice or hot water must not be too heavy; in 
fact, they must be just as light as they can possibly be 
made to be effective. Every time these applications are re- 
moved or changed, the abdomen should be rubbed thor- 
oughly five to ten minutes — always being governed by the 
results. When rubbing appears to bring quiet and com- 
fort, continue ; but when there are signs of discomfort, it 
should be discontinued for the time, and resumed later. 



214 Care of Children and Mothers 

When the bowels are distended with gas, the rubbing must 
be very light; otherwise it starts peristalsis — bearing- 
down bowel pains. 

If there is great thirst and the stomach is sick — sick 
to the extent of throwing everything up soon after swal- 
lowing — it will be well to put two or three ounces of warm 
water into the rectum every two or three hours, with a 
fountain syringe. By doing so the consuming thirst which 
some of these little patients suffer will be relieved, and 
they will be made comfortable. 

So long as there are any signs of sick stomach, not a 
spoonful of anything is to be swallowed. All the water 
necessary for controlling thirst can be given by enema. 
For this purpose there is nothing better than the ordi- 
nary fountain syringe — the piston or the bulb syringes 
are not suitable for babies. Two or three ounces of warm 
water is quite enough; more would excite bowel action 
and expel the water. The bowels may possibly be so 
irritable that a smaller quantity of water must be used. 
When the rectum is involved and there is dysenteric 
straining at each bowel movement, very little water can 
be retained. In that case recourse may be had to apply- 
ing wet cloths to the bowels, or an occasional tub bath, if 
these measures are not already being used for other pur- 
poses. 

When the stomach is settled, there is no reason why 
the child shall not have all the water it will take. A 
bottle with a rubber nipple should be used for this pur- 
pose. Young children can take water better in this way. 
Some people are afraid to give sick babies all the water 
they want. This is a mistaken idea. 

After the disease is under control, the sick stomach 
and fever are gone, and convalescence well established, it 
is then that real dietetic skill is required. If the child 
makes a complete recovery, and there are no sequels, such 
as a sensitive stomach, tendency to relapse or to have 



Cholera Infantum 215 

bowel trouble, either constipation or diarrhea, or a gen- 
eral run-down and anemic condition, it will be due to the 
fact that its parents have learned how to care for it, and 
have followed instructions. Negligence in the care of the 
child, after it has been very sick, will cause it to linger 
and occasionally have relapses, and death is not infre- 
quently the penalty. 

The first and most important thing to look after is 
the food. If the child is nursed by its mother or a wet- 
nurse, the health of either is of first importance. 

So long as a child has fever, and the bowels continue 
to run off, or there continue to be frequent bowel move- 
ments, it matters not of what character, no food of any 
kind is to be given — positively nothing but water; and if 
there is any doubt about the purity of the water, give the 
child the benefit of the doubt, and boil all the water used. 
It is not a good thing to give the child ice-water. How- 
ever, so long as the fever is high and the patient is very 
restless from the heat of the body as well as from the 
weather, the boiled water may be kept in a refrigerator 
and allowed to get as cold as it will, and be given to the 
child at this temperature, if it will take it. Very young 
children will refuse quite cold water. When they do, they 
should not be forced to take it by withholding water of a 
higher temperature; for the thirst will become so great 
that they will take anything. I have been called to see 
children in great distress, made so by parents, nurses, 
and sometimes doctors, mistaking a consuming thirst for 
hunger, and, in their kindness and sympathy, they have 
been, as they supposed, gratifying the child's hunger by 
giving it great quantities of milk ; and the more milk, or 
nurse, given under such circumstances, the more fermenta- 
tion, fever, restlessness, and bowel action there will be; 
and, of course, the more thirst. 

Food never relieves thirst. When food is given with 
the mistaken idea that the child is demanding it, the dis* 



216 Care of Children and Mothers 

ease grows more intense all the time; and if the mistake 
is not corrected, the child will most positively be killed. 

Nature is frequently frustrated by the kindly meant 
but killing offices of ignorant nursing. Feeding to relieve 
thirst is one of the commonest errors, and is really the 
cause of the large mortality in diseases of children. 

It would be well for those who minister to sick babies 
to understand the meaning of some of the most pro- 
nounced symptoms. It is impossible for anyone to meet 
and combat a given symptom or condition intelligently in 
the sick-room, if he does not understand its cause. 

Fever usually means fermentation — it means that there 
is a mass of ingesta that is not digesting, but in truth is 
absolutely rotting; and, because of this rotting, there are 
set free poison products which, being absorbed, poison 
the whole system. The efforts of the body to repel and 
expel these poisons are marked by general excitement. 
The nerve centers lose control; co-ordination being lost, 
organic functioning is either perverted or suspended ; the 
skin fails to radiate heat, and, as a consequence, the body 
becomes surcharged with heat ; and, as heat increases, the 
heart is stimulated into greater activity. All this in- 
creased activity is an indication of lost power, rather 
than an indication of strength. Fever may be likened to 
impotent rage; for it is not only warring against an in- 
vading foe, but it also consumes the body for which it 
fights. 

Those who have to do with fever should understand 
that it is the result of poison; and if the poison is not 
septic (coming from pent-up wounds — wounds pre- 
vented from discharging either by poor drainage or by 
retaining dressings), or pyogenic (caused by pus being 
forced into the circulation because of imperfect drainage 
of abscesses), it must come from food poisoning (food 
taken into the stomach and bowels, which for some cause 
is not digested, must break down and decay, and the 



Cholera Infantum 217 

fluid decay is absorbed and poisons the system). Hence 
it is necessary to determine whence the poisoning comes, 
and proceed at once to prevent further poisoning by doing 
away with the causes. 

How long should an attack of disease last? Until the 
cause is removed and its effects overcome. The reader 
should bear in mind that the immediate cause of all phys- 
ical derangements of this character is the poison gen- 
erated in the undigested material in the stomach and 
intestines at the onset of the disease, and the disease 
must end when that material has become exhausted, 

UNLESS MORE MATERIAL IS ADDED. 

Why did the food that caused the disease decompose 
and furnish poison, instead of digesting and furnishing 
nutriment? Because the child had lost its digestive 
power — its bodily resistance had become temporarily im- 
paired. If, then, the child was sick because it could not 
digest the food, what kind of logic or reason is it that 
ordains feeding under such circumstances? What is to 
hinder every teaspoonful of food, given under such cir- 
cumstances, from becoming poison? There is nothing to 
hinder. In truth, that is exactly what takes place; and it 
is the cause of a simple, short disease being converted 
into one of the most formidable and destructive of all 
diseases met with in the human race. 

This disease, as well as all other diseases to which 
man is heir, is self-limited, and, unless the feeding, nurs- 
ing, and medicating are especially bad, it will run out in 
a very short time. 

It appears impossible for all physicians to accept the 
fact that nutrition is always suspended when the body is 
suffering with pain or fever, or when laboring to keep a 
threatening foe from gaining entrance to the blood, such 
as we see when the child is vomiting and purging — na- 
ture's effort at throwing out an ingested meal that meets 
with a pathological fermentation instead of physiological 



218 Care of Children and Mothers 

fermentation. Instead of absorption taking place, this 
life-preserving process is reversed, and the serum of the 
blood is poured into the stomach or bowels, flushing this 
decaying material out, and causing the life-preserving 
process of vomiting and purging to take place, which 
expels the poison from the body. 

When these little patients are fed by ignorant mothers 
and doctors, this bleeding, as it were — this great pouring- 
out of the serum of the blood, in its endeavor to wash 
back and keep the poison from getting into the blood — 
soon exhausts these tender little patients. That is the 
reason why these cases melt away so fast. Mothers, if 
you would save your babies, stop feeding them until they 
are well! 

Treatment. — The treatment for cholera infantum must 
be the same as the treatment for any other disease; 
namely, meet the requirements. 

Formulary or routine practice will do for people pos- 
sessed of child-minds, but the educated man — the phi- 
losopher — must first know the principles and laws of life, 
health, and disease; and then he is ready to treat any 
deviation from the normal — from the physiological. 
Names mean nothing. A real physician cares nothing for 
the name "rheumatism," "typhoid fever," or "cholera in- 
fantum;" for the name really carries no significance. 
What is wanted is to know the patient, his environment 
and habits; the rest unfolds as naturally as the colors 
play when we have the raindrop, the sun, and the crys- 
talline lens of the eye. 

The history, and the many causative influences and 
symptoms that have been pointed out in the preceding 
chapters, all carry suggestions that are food for the 
thoughtful mind. 

The reader has learned, long before reaching this page, 
that there is no such thing as a disease and a cause for it. 
There are causes galore, and an almost endless variety of 



Cholera Infantum 219 

diseases ; but the idea that there is a cause, single and indi- 
vidual, that can be taken hold of and drugged and made 
an end of, is too childish and impossible to waste 
thought on. 

I would have my readers learn very early that disease 
will end when people cease to build it. 

In the matter of cure: Nature alone cures, and she is 
at it just as long as there is life. All chat the physician 
can do is to instruct the sick how to cease building their 
diseases, and nature will soon do the rest. This is true of 
the diseases peculiar to the little, innocent, sick babies, a 
treatment for which is about to be offered to mothers and 
doctors. 

Cholera infantum is the name of a disease whose hor- 
rible symptoms — nausea, vomiting, and running-oflf at the 
bowels — are characteristic. But what does it mean? 
Poison! Poison? How could a little baby be poisoned? 
You know the etiology has been gone over, but the imme- 
diate precipitating causes are thermo-athospheric and 
dietetic. Many children come into hot weather with a 
slight catarrhal inflammation of the stomach and intes- 
tines. If there is not a catarrhal condition, there is an 
irritable state of the mucous membrane. Most of these 
children were incumbered with too much weight when 
born ; and they have been fed too often, and kept in such 
a vulnerable state that all they need to precipitate a 
cholera infantum is the enervating effects of a few weeks 
of hot weather; then a feed or two of milk that has gath- 
ered from the nursing-bottle, nipple, or some other con- 
tainer, in its travel from the cow to the children's stom- 
achs, a little ferment (bacteria, if you please) ; or the fer- 
mentation may have started in their stomachs or bowels, 
or both. The children were prenatally overfed; the over- 
feeding has continued since birth, and their stomachs and 
bowels have become more or less inured to the common 



220 Care of Children and Mothers 

fermentation ; but the thermo-atmospheric change peculiar 
to hot weather has added a virulence to the ordinary fer- 
mentation which has carried it over to decomposition. 
Whether the decomposition that has set up this whole 
train of morbid symptoms is from without or from within 
— generated on the outside of the body or generated with- 
in — does not alter the fact that the poison is there, and 
is now threatening an invasion of their bodies. 

It must not be forgotten that poison, or anything else 
that is in the bowels, is still on the outside of the body; 
before it can get into the blood it must be taken up by the 
absorbents. And what we see here — all these symptoms 
which we call disease — are the throes of this tiny baby's 
body in a desperate struggle to resist the entrance of 
poison into its blood. The lay reader must give strict at- 
tention to this explanation ; for, if the symptoms of this 
disease are understood, the character of all diseases will 
be better understood. 

The vomiting and purging are not enemies; they are 
conservative measures; they expel the poison; and these 
symptoms are aided by a large pouring-out of fluid. In- 
stead of the absorbents taking up the fluid, the serum of 
the blood transudes into the stomach and bowels. This 
aids in diluting and rendering the decomposition innocu- 
ous, and at the same time furnishes enough fluid to render 
the vomiting easier, and very greatly aids in flushing and 
clearing the entire alimentary canal of the poison that 
has created so much trouble. 

It should not be forgotten that our bodies in health 
are potentized with immunizing power, and to a certain 
extent we can render innocuous deleterious agents taken 
into our alimentary canal along with our food. The gas 
trie and intestinal secretions attend to this for us 
every day of our lives; but when we live w r rongly, overeat 
or eat the wrong food, and break dow r n the resistance and 



Cholera Infantum 221 

take on a quantity of decomposition greatly in excess of 
the immunizing power of the digestive secretions, and the 
destruction of our bodies is threatened, there is a general 
halt ordered. Metabolism, so far as construction is con- 
cerned, is suspended, and it will not be resumed until it 
is safe to call off the defensive forces. 

The first prescription will be: Stop giving anything 
except water; and feeding is not to be thought of until 
the child is quite well. So long as there are restlessness, 
fever, and frequent watery stools, the child is laboring to 
throw off the poison, and it is positively murderous to 
feed. Any professional or non-professional who has read 
the foregoing, and will consent to feed before all ferment 
is out of the child's alimentary canal, is an incorrigible, 
and should not be given the care of children. 

If there is vomiting, positively no water is to be drunk. 
To relieve the thirst, a small amount of warm water may 
be put into the rectum with a fountain syringe — say, a 
half-pint every three hours. 

A wet cloth to the abdomen will help relieve the thirst 
and quiet the nervous irritation in the bowels. Proceed 
as follows : Wet a small towel in warm or hot water, or 
wet a fold of absorbent cotton ; place it on the abdomen, 
then a piece of oiled silk or thin sheet-rubber over the cot- 
ton, and then a dry towel binder over all. This application 
will not need to be changed oftener than night and morn- 
ing; for the oiled silk holds in the moisture and prevents 
wetting of the clothing and bed-covering. The wet appli- 
cation relieves the thirst as well as the nerves. The thirst 
is due to the great pouring-out of the water of the blood 
into the bowels, which passes out with each movement of 
the bowels. It is hard to relieve when the stomach is in- 
volved with the intestines in the sickness; for when both 
are engaged in throwing out the fluid for neutralizing the 
poison and washing it out, this w r aste of the fluids of the 



222 Care of Children and Mothers 

body is exhausting. It is not reasonable that these organs 
can be performing two functions at once, especially when 
the two functions are antipodal. There is no way, of 
which I have any knowledge, of going north while travel- 
ing south ; and while the mucous membrane is transuding 
it cannot be absorbing. That is, it is not possible for my 
patients to perform such Hindu tricks; but dear old or- 
thodoxy is filled with all sorts of antitheses traveling 
amicably together while going in opposite directions. It 
is enough to cause the brain of common folk to whirl and 
grow giddy, but there is nothing like it when one becomes 
used to it. 

So long as order reigns, it should be assumed that, 
when the stomach is engaged in expelling an enemy, and 
exuding fluid for that purpose, it cannot be absorbing; 
and I shall lay it down as a fundamental principle on 
which to act, that, when vomiting is going on, water 
should not be given. If water is kept out of a sick stom- 
ach, that organ will succeed in coating the mucous mem- 
brane with a thick, tenacious mucus, which acts as a pro- 
tection, and if it is not washed off, the irritation of the 
mucous membrane will soon subside. 

The process is as follows: At first there is irritation, 
which causes a pouring-out of the serum of the blood; this 
washes away the poison, which is the cause of the irrita- 
tion, and at the same time a thick, tenacious secretion is 
being exuded, so that, when the thin fluid floats or flushes 
the decomposition off, the tenacious secretion covers and 
prevents the poison from coming in contact with the 
mucous membrane. The irritation that causes all this 
secretion is interpreted by the patient as thirst; and, of 
course, there is thirst; but the more water given, the more 
irritation there must be; for it cannot be absorbed, and it 
interrupts the process of protecting the mucous mem- 
brane, as explained above. The water must be expelled 



Cholera Infantum 223 

by vomiting, and the vomiting further irritates and re- 
moves the mucous protection. If the modus operandi is 
understood, no one will be foolish enough to make the sick 
more uncomfortable. It should be remembered, and it 
should become popular knowledge, that a sick stomach 
should not be further irritated by giving water; for the 
water cannot be absorbed, and if it could be, it would not 
be desirable. 

In all sick stomachs, especially in typhoid or cholera 
infantum, there is an irritation due to the bad effect of 
decomposition. The nausea and vomiting are a conserva- 
tive measure, and, rightly interpreted, mean, as explained 
above, a suspension of absorption and a pouring-out of 
the water of the blood and other secretions for the purpose 
of immunizing and flushing. There is thirst from loss of 
the fluids of the body, but this thirst is difficult to satisfy. 
There is a bad taste in the mouth, which sometimes causes 
the patient to refuse to drink, in spite of the thirst. Ee- 
peated attempts at drinking meet with failure, and the 
patient, if not a baby, expresses surprise and impatience 
at his inability to drink, when his desire is so strong. 
T]iis is self-protection — nature endeavoring to keep water 
out of a stomach that is busy fortifying against the inva- 
sion of the blood by a poison. When the taste can be 
tempted by pleasing flavors, and the guard — the bad taste 
— be inveigled into allowing something to pass into the 
rebellious stomach before it is safe to do so, there is but 
one result, and that is, more sick stomach and more vom- 
iting. Hence it is well to remember that, when water 
tastes bad, it is nature's sign that it will be detrimental to 
drink it until the stomach is ready to receive it; then it 
can be taken with comfort and pleasure. In the mean- 
time water may be given by the rectum ; for in the early 
days of this sickness the lower bowel is not involved, and 
if the disease is controlled as it should and can be, it will 

15 



224 Care of Children and Mothers 

never become involved; hence it will take water. But if 
later the rectum becomes involved, the stomach will be 
better and can take water. 

When those who take care of the sick can be made to 
believe, and will then remember, that an inflamed mucous 
membrane will not absorb anything until it is well, or if 
it has lost a portion of its mucous surface by sloughing- — 
from necrosis due to whatever the cause may be — they will 
be in a position to aid nature, or at least not obstruct her 
by giving water, food, and drugs. If water only is given, 
it must come back ; and the longer vomiting is kept up, the 
more irritation and danger there is of sloughing, This 
applies to the bowels as well as to the stomach ; for it 
the water is not absorbed by the stomach, it must either 
come up by vomiting or pass through the pylorus and cause 
the bowels to run off more than they otherwise would. 
Food of any kind acts the same, only worse. When the 
nausea and vomiting are gone, all the water desired may 
be given; for it will be taken up by the stomach. But 
food must not be given until the diarrhea is gone; for the 
bowels must aid digestion, and they will not do so as long 
as there is inflammation. If food be given, there is dan- 
ger of a sloughing of the mucous membrane; then absorp- 
tion of decomposition will take place, and a septic poison 
will enter the blood, which is liable to kill quickly ; for the 
child cannot resist this state so well as grown people, and 
even grown people die of such absorption. 

If readers are convinced of the reasonableness of the 
suggestion : Do not feed until all symptoms of disease are 
gone, I shall feel satisfied that I have accomplished some- 
thing worth while. 

Next will be considered the various phases of this dis- 
ease that are liable to develop after the children have been 
treated in the usual way. 



Cholera Infantum 225 

When the disease first begins — it does not matter what 
the symptoms are: Stop feeding; wash out the bowels; 
give a warm-to-hot bath; keep the child quiet, use applica- 
tions to bowels ; rub the body all over with the open hand 
often enough to quiet the child and secure rest. Keep the 
child in a room with its nurse ; a third person must not be 
in the room ; there must not be talking in any sick-room, 
nor in adjoining rooms near enough to be heard. The 
bowels, until cleaned out, should be washed every six 
hours; after that once a day until well. If there is no 
nausea, give all the water the child will take. Keep the 
feet of all sick people warm. Those who have to do with 
cholera-infantum cases, or any kind of baby sickness, 
must keep the children's feet warm. I have seen the little 
folk dying in the hottest weather from lack of artificial 
heat. Children treated on this plan will not become so 
very prostrate; for their sickness will not last long enough. 

When a child is fretful, not sick and not well, reach- 
ing for everything, refusing everything, taking only a 
drop of water, begging to nurse, take it to a quiet room, 
darken by drawing the shades, remove its clothes, slip on 
a loose bed-dress, and put it in the bed ; and, if necessary, 
the nurse or mother should lie down by it, and slip a hand 
on the bowels and rub it lightly for some time ; then rub 
the back. It will not be long until the child's nerves will 
be quiet. If it still keeps restless, give it a warm-to-hot 
bath, and continue the plan outlined. 

If the child does not quiet down and get to feeling 
well soon, or as soon as parents wish, it is because the 
derangement is too severe; it requires more time. Rest 
assured that there is no treatment so sure, safe, and 
speedy ; and if a patient lingers under it, it proves that the 
disease is a severe attack, with a badly run-down condi- 
tion of the system. It may take three days and nights 
before the child is ready for food ; but if it is not ready at 



226 Care of Children and Mothers 

the end of that time, continue the fast for another twenty- 
four hours, and even another, if such heroic measures are 
necessary. Do not lose all the benefit the fast has brought 
by feeding too soon and forcing a return of the decompo- 
sition. 

When the temperature is 103 degrees Fahrenheit, the 
bath should be started at a temperature of 90 degrees, and 
gradually increased to 100 degrees. The length of time 
the child is to be kept in the bath must be in keeping with 
its needs and resistance. It should be watched; and if 
it appears to grow comfortable, the nervous symptoms 
subside, and the temperature declines, the bath should be 
prolonged to one-half, three-quarters, or even a whole 
hour. If the child shows by its actions that it is growing 
more comfortable all the time, no harm can possibly come 
to it by prolonging the bath to complete relaxation ; after 
which it should be taken to an airy room — no drafts — 
placed on a soft bed or pillow, and lightly covered. It 
should not be annoyed by putting even a loose gown on it 
until it has rested from the bath, unless fortunate enough 
to have the bed-dress heretofore recommended. If it can 
sleep, see to it that there is absolute quiet, so that the 
sleep will not be disturbed. 

It is necessary to secure all the rest and sleep possible 
for these little patients, but not by administering drugs — 
never! Millions of them have been sent across the Great 
Divide by a vain endeavor to force rest and sleep by the 
administration of drugs supposed to act in this way. 

It is criminal to give anything in the drug line to quiet 
patients at any age, but especially is this true in infants ; 
for infants are characteristically susceptible to the action 
of such drugs, w r hich always act detrimentally. 

If these drugs were not per se detrimental in their 
action, they should not be thought of in the treatment of 
infants ; for it should be understood that children will not 



Cholera Infantum 227 

be sick unless they are made sick. Hence, instead of hid- 
ing their pain for a very little while by giving a palliating 
drug, the physician whose advice is sought should reason 
thus: "The child cannot be sick from any cause except 
food ; for it is not exposed in any other way ; hence the 
restlessness and suffering must come from digestive dis- 
turbances. I will stop the food entirely, and give warm 
baths often enough to remove all pain." This is the 
proper reasoning, and the treatment has no equal. 

The pain-killer and life-saver, first, last, and all the 
time, is to stop food, and keep it stopped until the victory 
is won. 

There is nothing so conducive to sleep as absolute quiet. 
That is the reason I lay so much stress on isolation and re- 
stricting the nursing to one person. 

When the child is very sick, with blanched counte- 
nance and almost imperceptible breathing, slip the pillow 
out from under the head ; elevate the feet, if possible with- 
out disturbance; place artificial heat all around the body; 
secure plenty of air, and let the child alone. Further 
treatment than this is malpractice. 

The case with high fever must have the bowels washed 
with warm water and soda — a teaspoonful of baking-soda 
to the quart of water. Wash the bowels before and after 
the bath. Allow the child to rest for an hour after the 
bath before washing the bowels. When from appearances 
the bowels are pretty well cleared out, stop the enemas, 
as they are weakening. Use enough water in the bowels 
to relieve the thirst — say, a half -pint every three hours. 
This is to be continued until the stomach can take it. 

All cases with very high temperature — say, 103° F. and 
over — must be kept in the bath just as long as it appears 
to be relieving — not, however, to exceed an hour. Then 
they are to be put to bed, and all the instructions given 
heretofore are to be carried out. If the temperature is at 



228 Care of Children and Mothers 

103° F. or above, after leaving the bath, put ice to the 
abdomen, heat to the feet, and keep the child quiet — abso- 
lutely quiet. 

The collapsed case must be kept very quiet and warm. 
Enemas are exhausting; do not use them; do as near noth- 
ing for the child as possible. If it appears to go down, 
put it in blankets that have been previously heated. Do 
not do this in a shilly-shally manner. Toast the child! 
See to it that it is just as warm as it can be made, not 
to burn it; and do not forget how necessary it is to have 
fresh air and absolute quiet. If it revives and warms up, 
remove the covering, a little at a time. See to it, however, 
that it has no chance to grow cold. Bear in mind that 
infants have very little power of resistance. After a 
shock of this kind, with a sudden reduction of the fluids 
of the body, their life-forces are running very low, and 
every time they are moved, it matters not how gently, it 
costs them nerve power. 

What else is there to do? If there is an indication of 
thirst, put two ounces of water in the rectum with a foun- 
tain syringe every three hours. Positively nothing else 
until full reaction is established and all indications of 
sickness are gone. How long it will be I cannot say; each 
case of this kind is a law unto itself, and will have to be 
treated accordingly. Feeding will begin when all symp- 
toms of disease are gone. At first, fruit juice in water. 

A few cases have convulsions. The treatment need not 
differ materially. Much may be expected from the bath, 
and it must be pushed to complete relaxation. First of 
all, in convulsions at any age and from any disease — with 
the possible exception of certain heart complications — the 
bowels must be cleared out by copious enemas of warm 
w^ater; then to the bath, starting it at 90° F., gradually 
increasing to 100° F. But if the symptoms are not 
ameliorated, or the muscular rigidity increases, gradually 



Cholera Infantum 229 

increase the temperature of the water to 105° F., and hold 
it at that temperature for five or ten minutes; then in- 
crease to 110° F., carefully watching the pulse and breath- 
ing. If either shows a tendency to fail, and there is re- 
laxation of the muscles — a complete subsidence of the con- 
vulsions — remove the patient from the bath and make it 
comfortable in bed, with heat to the feet. If the muscles 
stay rigid, and other symptoms indicate a continuance of 
the convulsions, continue the bath to full relaxation. If 
symptoms of convulsions return, put the patient in the 
bath, and do as before, repeating as often as necessary 
until there is no more return. 

Treating convalescents. — When the disease is fully con- 
trolled, it will be known by the following changes; 
namely : The bowel discharges lose their disagreeable 
odor, and the color changes from green, mixed with mucus, 
to a normal color and proper consistency; instead of be- 
ing indifferent to all that is going on around it, the child 
notices — shows interest — and is much more easily taken 
care of; it sleeps well, and has ceased to whine and find 
fault with every effort made to please it ; and the fever is 
gone. When the foregoing signs of returning health are 
present, the child may be given a little fruit juice for one 
or two days. Blackberries are a splendid fruit for sick 
babies. They should be prepared as directed elsewhere. 
A -sweet cherry — the Washington, or California dark-red 
that is on the markets of most cities — is about as nice as 
the berry. There is no objection to the juice of sweet 
oranges. Peaches and pears are allowable when fine. 

After two days of fruit juice, three times a day. if 
everything is moving along satisfactorily, on the third 
morning the child should be given one-half of a feed of 
the food to- which it was accustomed before it was taken 
sick. If it has been nursed by its mother up to the time 
of taking sick, and she lost her milk during the child's 



230 Care of Children and Mothers 

sickness, it will be necessary to select an artificial food. 
If a wet-nurse is not to be had, use the milk from a healthy 
cow — if possible, from a cow that is cared for properly — 
and secure the milk fresh from the cow at each feeding; 
or, if a goat can be had — one that is properly cared for — 
take her milk fresh at each feed. Give what would be half 
a feed, and have the rubber nipple perforated, so that the 
baby will have to work for what milk it nurses from the 
bottle. If the milk comes too fast, the child will not have 
occasion to work the tongue, jaws, and cheeks enough to 
generate the amount of saliva necessary to secure good 
digestion; and, besides, the working of the tongue, jaws, 
and cheeks stimulates gastric as well as intestinal secre- 
tion. 

If the milk flows through the nipple too easily, it may 
be well to stuff it with a little aseptic lamb's wool. The 
wool may be thrown away after each nursing, or it may 
be boiled and thoroughly cleansed. 

Milk should be prepared according to instructions else- 
where to be found in this book. 

In the morning of the third day the child should have 
one-half of its accustomed food. If it has been fed on its 
mother's breast, and now must change, and it is six 
months old, it should be given two and one-half ounces of 
milk and one-half ounce of water. If it is a year old, it 
should be given three and one-third ounces of milk and 
two-thirds of an ounce of water for the first feed; then 
fruit juice for the other two feeds for the third day. If 
all is well on the fourth day, give the same amount of milk 
for the morning meal, and the same for the evening meal, 
and at noon the fruit juice. If all is well on the fifth day, 
give the same for the morning meal ; at ten o'clock a feed 
of fruit — all it will take without urging; then at two and 
at six o'clock the same-sized meals of milk. 



Cholera Infantum 231 

Three feeds a day is sufficient; but if the parents in- 
sist on feeding four times a day, they are permitted to do 
so with children under eight months. However, if the 
convalescing child is a year old, one of those feeds should 
be fruit. At the beginning of the second week of feeding, 
increase the amount of milk one-half ounce each day, until 
the child is taking all required. 

If the child feels bad at any time after the feeding be- 
gins, stop the food until everything clears up ; then return 
to the feeding as usual. 

Once upon a time I was chased from pillar to post — 
taxed to the uttermost — to find suitable foods. Those 
were days of "try this," "try that," and "try the other 
thing." I had the usual success of the guessing school; 
namely, when the guess hit, it hit, and when it missed, it 
missed; and I knew the reason for the one as w^ell as I 
knew the reason for the other. 

If there is a Fools' Paradise anywhere on earth, it is 
surely practicing medicine according to the standards. 

Never feed between meals, and if a child is taken care 
of properly, there is no excuse for sickness. Always bear 
in mind that sickness comes from breaking health laws. 
Learn the law, and obey. 

CHRONIC DIARRHEA. 

Children with chronic diarrheas should be treated as 
follows : Stop all food except the fruit juices, and give 
them three times a day until the bowels have righted them- 
selves. After that, give one regular feed a day, with two 
of fruit; and then increase slowly, as the child's bowels 
can stand it. 



232 Care of Children and Mothers 

THE MOKE COMMON AILMENTS OF CHILDHOOD 

Hives. — Give soda bath; a tablespoonful of baking- 
soda and a gallon of water. Drop one feed a day, or two 
if necessary, until the hives are gone. 

Rough clothing — starched clothing — strong soap, and 
harsh skin-rubbing may cause skin disease. Eemove the 
cause. 

Crust on scalp conies from not washing the scalp 
enough. A fine-tooth comb should be used to comb off all 
dead skin. Use olive oil evenings, and castile soap of a 
morning. Keep the scalp clean. Care should be taken 
not to injure the scalp. 

Bed-wetting is to be overcome by careful diet, after a 
child is old enough to be weaned and put on regular eat- 
ing. Give only dry food after twelve o'clock noon. 

Scurvy comes from feeding artificial foods, and from 
abstinence from fruit and vegetable juices. Stop all oth&r 
food for a few days, and feed fruit. Then regularly give 
one meal of fruit each day. 

Constipation and diarrhea may cause convulsions. To 
cure, remove cause. 

Thrush is the first symptom of acid poisoning, scurvy 
next — fruit juice the cure. 

Colds come from overeating and often from sugar poi- 
soning. Stop all food ; give nothing but water or a little 
fruit juice. Clear out the bowels with enemas. 

Earache. — Put warm oil in ear; put hot cloth or hot- 
water bottle to ear. It may come from teething ; it may 
come from a light form of diphtheria or scarlet fever. If 
necessary, get the family physician's advice. 



More Common Ailments 233 

Croup can be relieved wilh hot bath. If croupy 
cough comes on in the evening, and continues to do so for 
a few days, the child not appearing to be sick, call the 
family physician and see if there is need of uneasiness. 
Diphtheria or true croup often comes on very gradually. 

Cry of temper comes and goes. When the child's wish 
is granted, the cry stops. Many mothers are fooled into 
medicating a child because of an angry cry, mistaking it 
for the cry of hunger or sickness. 

Colic. — A young child may have colic. The diagnostic 
symptom is : The child will be forced out of a quiet sleep, 
crying and drawing the legs up. When the pain subsides, 
the child will go off to sleep, to awaken again in pain, 
with the feet and legs drawn up, and crying. 

Treatment: Stop feeding until well. Use enemas of 
a teaspoonful of baking-soda and a quart of water. 

Always warm a child, it matters not what is the mat- 
ter. Put in hot bath, or put on hot applications. 

The cry of hunger is stopped at once when food is 
given ; the child eats and then sleeps. 

Fretfulness means discomfort, and food will change a 
discomfort into a sickness. If the stools have white curd 
in them, stop food and clear out the bowels ; then feed one- 
fourth the regulation amount, and increase as the diges- 
tion improves. The stools will indicate. 



Chapter VI 
MISCELLANEOUS 



I 



THE FOUR GOLDEN RULES 

^T IS well for mothers to be governed, from 
the birth of their children until they are 
grown, by four rules. These are my Golden 
Rules : 



Rule No. 1. — Never feed a child when it is 
V^>fjgp^> feeling uncomfortable. When a child is fret- 
ful, cross, and irritable, it is safe to decide 
that the child is not well — that it is feeling uncomfortable. 
The next meal due should be left out, and if the discom- 
fort continues from that meal time until the next, give no 
food. Continue to go without food until the child is com- 
fortable. 

How will the mother know when this state is reached? 
The child will become good-natured, begin to pay attention 
to objects around it, and show signs of amusing itself. 
Then it should be fed about one-half what it is in the habit 
of taking. If discomfort returns, then it must miss the 
next meal, and if necessary the next; but as soon as it 
has the appearance of being normal from one meal time 
to the next, it should be fed, always giving it the same 
food that it has been in the habit of taking, and in about 
half the quantity taken before it became uncomfortable. 

Rule No. 2. — Never feed a child that has no relish for 
food — that is, has no relish for the food that it has been 



Four Golden Rules 235 

in the habit of taking. When offered its regular meal, 
and the child refuses, it should be offered no food again 
until the next regular feeding time. It is positively nec- 
essary that this rule be carried out, if mothers would help 
their children avoid sick spells. 

Rule No. 3. — Help the child avoid overeating. How 
can this be done? Watch symptoms — watch the condition 
of the bowels. When there are signs of taking a little too 
much food, reduce the amount given, and continue to re- 
duce a little every day, until the proper amount is found. 
What is the proper amount of food for a child? All that 
it can take without discomfort, and without showing signs 
of indigestion. Since a child will show white curds in 
the stools when it is taking too much milk, the amount 
should be cut down until the proper quantity is found. 

Rule No. If. — Thoroughly masticate and insalivate all 
food. Children must be held back and prevented, if pos- 
sible, from bolting food. They must be taught as early as 
possible to keep food in the mouth and mix it with saliva 
before it is swallowed. 

These four rules, well observed on the part of the 
parents, will save them much trouble in the way of sick 
children. 

FOREIGN BODIES IN NOSE, EARS, AND WINDPIPE 

Some children are inclined to put beans, pebbles, and 
small pieces of almost anything into the nose or ears ; and 
many times they carry pebbles, beans, or corn in their 
mouths, and by laughing or inhaling suddenly will draw 
the object into the trachea, Where this occurs, a physician 
must be sent for at once. The child should be held 
up by the heels, its head down, and gently pounded on the 
back. If the object is not dislodged in this way, the effort 



236 Care of Children and Mothers 

at getting it dislodged should be kept up until the doctor 
arrives. 

Beans or corn pushed into the nose can be very easily 
removed by bending a piece of wire; or a very slender 
hairpin may be pushed in around the object to be pulled 
out. If by gentle manipulations of this character the 
mother or nurse is unable to extract the object, a physi- 
cian should be sent for. 

As the cavity of the ear is not very deep, and quite sen- 
sitive near the eardrum, children are not inclined to put 
anything very far into the ear. A small object put into 
the ear can easily be taken out by a small pair of forceps. 

Occasionally a child is found that will introduce peb- 
bles, corn, peas, or beans into the vagina. This sometimes 
is done, and parents will know nothing about it. Finally 
their attention will be called to a discharge — a form of 
leucorrhea. When a discharge is in evidence, a fountain 
syringe may be used to cleanse the mouth and inside of 
the vagina. A small rectal tube may be used for the pur- 
pose, with a quart of warm water and a heaping teaspoon- 
ful of baking-soda. If any object can be seen, it may be 
removed with a small wire or hairpin. If it cannot be 
reached, a physician should be called. 

CARE OF THE BREASTS AFTER CHILDBIRTH 

If the breasts are not abused, there is not much danger 
of abscess. Breast-pumps are abscess-builders, and, when 
circumstances force their use, it should be done by some- 
one who is skilled in their manipulation. It should be 
considered a misfortune when a mother requires a breast- 
pump to be used. 

Many authors declare that abscess of the breast is 
caused from catching cold, etc. My experience does not 
justify me in agreeing with this statement. I believe that 



Hints for Mothers 237 

invariably the breasts have been bruised; hence care 
should be exercised not to bruise the breasts. 

How to dry up milk. — Many resort to drawing the milk 
with a breast-pump to relieve the accumulation after a 
child has been taken away from the breasts. This is a 
mistake. If the breasts become sensitive or feverish and 
painful, warm applications may be placed over them, but 
no milk should be removed. After the breasts have been 
swollen to the fullest extent for about twenty-four hours, 
they will gradually decline, and the milk will dry up very 
rapidly. There is no danger of abscess forming from 
neglect of pumping the breasts; it is the pumping that 
causes the abscess to develop. All a mother needs to do is 
to let her breasts alone. If they get very heavy and badly 
swollen, she should lie down and place something warm 
on them, and console herself with the fact that it will 
not be more than a day or two before everything will be 
all right. 

HINTS FOE MOTHERS 

"A hint to the wise is sufficient." 

Bathing. — At birth, if baby is exhausted from a long, 
hard labor, oil its body with olive oil or white vaseline, 
and postpone washing for a day or more. Water should 
be blood heat — ninety-eight degrees. 

When baby is strong, it may be washed as soon as born. 
Use castile soap — no perfumery; use talcum powder — no 
other powders. 

Clothes should be soft cotton or linen; a wool skirt 
from shoulders down. Clothes should not be starched. 

Night-dresses should open in the back, so that they 
may be separated to the waist to prevent getting wet every 
time the child urinates. 



238 Care op Children and Mothers 

Clothing should be made of wash-goods; made simple, 
not expensive. There should be many garments, so as to 
change frequently — every day or of tener ; often enough to 
keep baby sweet and clean. 

Wash with warm water as often as diapers are 
changed. It is necessary to keep all urine smell away. 

Diapers should be of soft goods, and washed as soon as 
taken off, if only soiled with urine. 

Temperature of room where baby lives should be about 
seventy degrees. It should be eighty degrees when baby 
is to be washed. 

Before bathing, have every article needed on a tray 
that may be placed on a chair or table near by. The 
clothes may be on a clothes-horse. Everything should be 
within reach. 

Eyes, nose, and mouth should not receive any attention 
beyond ordinary washing, unless there appears to be need 
of doing so. 

The doctoring habit. — Doctoring anything and every- 
thing, in season and out of season — indeed, when there is 
no need — is a species of fanaticism to avoid. 

Cleanliness is all that is necessary in the care of chil- 
dren. 

Soap in eyes. — Only a clumsy person will allow soap 
to get into the eyes of a baby. 

How to lift baby in and out of bath, or handle a naked 
baby. — Slip left hand under shoulders and up to neck; 
allow child's body to rest on arm while neck and base of 
head are resting between the thumb and forefinger; then 
the right hand may be under the buttock or hold the feet 
and legs. This sort of grip will make the baby safe from 
slipping out of the hands. 



Hints for Mothers 239 

Babies should be dressed very lightly in hot weather. 
When the evenings are cool, they should have more 
clothing put on them. 

Children chill very easily. 



Night air. — At night there is no other air than night 



air. 



How to give an enema. — When a child is suffering 
from distention of the bowels and constipation, it is nec- 
essary to get the bowels to move as soon as possible. 

Put a heaping teaspoonful of salt into a quart of warm 
water. Fill a fountain syringe, and introduce as much 
into the bowels as possible. The fountain should be hung 
not more than three feet above the child's body. The 
nurse or mother should avoid a very great fall for the 
water — too much force must not be used. If one enema 
does not move the bowels satisfactorily, use another, and 
another, until the bowels are cleared out. Sometimes a 
warm bath should be given if the child is suffering a 
great deal of pain. Have the water as warm as the child 
can bear. The water at first may -be pleasantly warm. 
Place the child in it, and then add hot water until the 
bath is as hot as prudent for a young child, which should 
not be above ninety degrees. While the child is taking 
the hot bath, the enema may be used, allowing the dis- 
charge to take place in the bath-tub. 

If it is necessary to give an enema to a baby, use a 
fountain syringe or a small bulb syringe. The latter is 
too small to be of much use except to empty the rectum. 
An oilcloth may be spread over the lap of the nurse, with 
diapers over it, allowing both oilcloth and diapers to fall 
down into a large pail or slop-jar. Turn the child on its 
left side while giving enema. The discharge will thus be 
allowed to flow down into the jar. 

16 



240 Care op Children and Mothers 

Much more could have been written — a larger book 
could have been made; but this is my offering to mothers 
— to parents. I believe that everything necessary to aid 
parents in starting their children right in the line of 
health may be found in this little book. 

As a parting word, I shall say to those who want to 
realize the greatest good: Follow the instructions as 
given. Ideal results will not come from pretty nearly 
■following instructions. 

It has been my endeavor to avoid superfluous advice, 
and everything that I have suggested is the result of 
years of experience. 

My best wishes accompany this little book. If parents 
secure the benefit that it is my wish they should, my 
efforts will have been fully rewarded. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



A 

Abscess — Page 

caused by use of breast-pump 13 

in appendicitis 149 

Abuse, sexual 17 

Acid state 39, 99, 133 

Acidos's 47 

Adenoids i 99, 115, 121, 136 

Advantage of want 65 

Ailments, more common to childhood 232 

Air — 

bathing 36 

night 239 

Airing 37 

Amount of feeds 60 

Anemia 51 

Appendicitis 110, 114, 148 

Appetites, gluttonous 60 

Artificial feeding 15, 51 

affects weight 46 

Artific'al heat necessary in sickness 43 

Authoritative feeding 80 

Autotoxemia 115, 120, 130 

B 

Babies, weaning 13 

Bacteria 21 

Bad breath 81, 132 

Barley, how to prepare 101 

Bathing — 

for mother 29 

for babies, water 32, 237 

for babies, when 33 

air 36 

for school children 95, 110 



244 Index 

Bed — Page 

care of 37 

wetting 103, 120, 232 

Birth, mother should be regenerated with 9 

Born well — 

child must be 6 

if not, how to proceed 40 

Bottles, nursing- 54 

Bowels 29 

diseases of 21 

Breakfast cereals 86 

Breast, care of, after childbirth 236 

Breast-pump, use of 13, 29 

C 

Cakes 113 

Cancer 26 

Candies 113, 121 

Care of — 

bed 37 

eyes 38 

mouth 38 

milk 52 

sick-room 207 

Care of children — 

when to begin 5 

responsibility and privilege of 9 

at birth 31 

bathing 32 

airing 37 

clothing 41 

wei gh t 45 

talking 47 

walking 48 

teething 49 

feeding 50 

weaning 71 

according to L. Emmet Holt, M.D 75 

when uncomfortable 83 

from five years to full development 89 

Care of mother 7, 200 

before birth 10 

after birth 20 



Index 245 

Care of mother — (Continued) — Page 

diet in pregnancy 25 

diet after confinement 28 

breast, care of, after confinement 236 

Catarrh 11, 99, 114, 127, 133, 136, 196 

Catarrhal conjunctivitis 127, 130 

Catarrhal inflammation 151 

Catarrhal laryngitis 150 

Catching cold 108 

Cats 23 

Cause — 

of variation in time of teething 49 

no single 192, 218 

Cereals, breakfast 86 

Certified milk 53 

Chafing, skin 40, 44 

Changing food 14, 84 

Chicken-pox 143 

Childbirth— 

a natural phenomenon 7, 12 

care of breasts after 236 

Children- 
brought into the world handicapped 10 

born incumbered 12, 16 

cause of sickness in 19 

must be kept warm 43, 82, 201, 233 

affected by sugar-eating of mother 47 

expected to be sick 61 

eugenic 64, 67 

how to know when thriving 68 

to cure spoiled 68 

overfeeding 69 

care of overfed 70 

weaning 71 

how often to feed 60, 62, 64, 75, 79, 201 

restless 81 

should have plenty of water 84 

diseases of 98 

should be out of doors 109 

incorrigible 159 

Chocolate 103 

Cholera infantum 18, 196 

Chorea 153 

Circumcision 34 



246 Index 

Cleanliness of — Page 

houses necessary 22, 37, 111 

bodies necessary 35, 44 

milk necessary 54 

Clothing — 

of babies 41, 238 

during sickness 209 

of school children 91 

rough 232 

Coffee 103, 121 

Colds 103, 128, 232 

catching 108 

to cure Ill 

Colic 15, 233 

Colitis 114, 147 

Common dyscrasia 134 

Conception, care of children should begin before 5 

Confinement — 

diet after 28 

necessities for 30 

Conjunctivitis, catarrhal 127, 130 

Constipation of children 14, 101, 110, 113, 129, 132, 147, 204, 232 

Contagious diseases 36, 100, 137 

measles 140 

German measles 142 

smallpox 143 

chicken-pox 143 

whooping-cough 144 

mumps 145 

diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, pneumonia 146 

Convulsions 13, 20, 129, 152, 157, 199 

Corsets 30 

Cough 112 

winter 112 

whooping- 144, 156 

Cream 57 

Croup 150, 233 

Crying — 

is there danger of too much? 69, 152 

of temper 233 

Curd in stools 83, 198, 205 



Index 247 

D 

Decomposition — Page 

of food 21 

carried by mice 23 

Desirable transmission 65 

Diabetes 113 

Diapers 44, 238 

Diarrhea 29, 39, 82, 101, 129, 231, 232 

Diet- 
in pregnancy 25 

after confinement 28 

Difference between sick, overfed, and spoiled children 69 

Dilution of milk 51 

Diphtheria 18, 104, 131, 132, 146, 151 

Disease is health impaired 120 

Diseases — 

contagious 36, 137 

of children 98 

Dogs 23 

Drinking 50 

Drinks, soft 29 

Dull students should eat little 91 

Dyscrasia, common 134 



Earache 232 

Ears, foreign bodies in 235 

Eating — 

for two 10, 26 

during pregnancy 26 

Ectopic pregnancy 27 

Enema, how to give 239 

Energy, potential 65 

Enervation — 

from fear 16 

in children 132 

Enlarged tonsils 99, 113, 121, 134 

Enuresis 103, 120 

Epidemic poliomyelitis 172 

Epilepsy 152, 157, 159 

Eugenic children 64, 67 



248 Index 

Exercise for — Page 

expectant mothers 29 

nursing mothers 200 

Exclusive milk diet 51 

Expectant mothers, suggestions for 29 

Eye — 

care of 38 

strain 125 



F 

Fear is enervating 16 

Feeding — 

first year 50 

second year 74, 80 

first six months of 74 

last six months of 75 

authoritative 80 

third to fifth year 86 

fifth year to full development 89 

Fermentation . 21, 216 

pathological and physiological 21 

cause of 82, 99, 115 

acid of 127 

Fever 61, 216 

scarlet 19, 104, 131, 146 

gastric 131, 140 

typhoid 104, 146 

Flies 22 

Fluid, premature expulsion of 31 

Food- 
changing 14, 84 

artificial 15, 51 

tainted 21 

amount of, first year 60 

how often to give 60, 62, 64, 75, 79, 201 

sugar as a 63 

starch as a 63, 78, 79 

after stomach irritation is overcome 70 

during hot weather 71, 72, 78 

while weaning 72 

proteid not needed before third year 78 

best for sick child , 85 

for school children 90 



Index 249 

Food — (Continued) — Page 

should be kept from tired children 133 

poisoning 136 

Food poisoning, constitutional 11 

Foreign bodies in nose, ear, and windpipe 235 

Foreskin, care of 34 

Four rules 234 

Frequency of feeds 60, 75, 79, 115, 201 

Fruit 74, 78, 80, 83, 86, 206 

constipating 101 

Function precedes structure 119 

G 

Gas, in pregnant women 7, 27 

Gastric fever 131, 140 

Gastritis 196 

Genitalia, care of 34 

Germs 98, 104, 109, 120 

Gestation 174 

correct living during 8, 20 

irritability during 12 

Glandular infection 77 

Gluttonous appetites 60 

Grinding of teeth 100, 102 

H 

Habits 50 

Headache 100 

Health, insures prophylaxis 22 

Heart, rheumatic 25 

Heat enervates 92 

Heredity, what is it? 5, 116 

Hernia 152 

Hints to mothers 237 

Hives 232 

Holt, L. Emmet, M.D., on care of children 75 

Home must be clean 23, 37, 111 

Hot weather — 

feeding during 71. 72, 78 

enervates 83 

Hunger is necessary 61 

Hurrying labor 8, 163 



250 Index 

i 

Page 

Incorrigible children 159, 166 

Incumbered children 12, 16, 46, 64 

Indigestion ,....56, 96, 128 

Infantile paralysis 18, 48, 154 

Inheritance of intelligence and morality 5 

Irritability — 

during gestation 12 

toward children 18 

of mother after birth 20 

of babies 81, 83 

of school children 89, 100, 133 

Irritations — 

of eye 38 

of stomach 70, 100, 124, 131 

reflex 122 



J 

Juices, vegetable 204 



Keep sick babies warm 82 

Keep children out of doors 109 

Kidneys 25 



L 
Labor — 

natural 7, 32 

hurrying 8, 163 

long, tedious 25, 31 

dry 31 

La grippe 109 

Laryngitis, catarrhal 150 

Leucorrhea 30 

Lifting the baby 238 

Lime, when to give 80 

Love necessary for perfect development 18, 43 



Index 251 

M 

Page 

Malnutrition 51 

Malodors 45 

Measles 140 

German 142 

Meningitis 174, 187 

Menstruation, painful 12 

Mice carry decomposition 23 

Milk- 
selecting 52 

care of 52, 54 

certified 53 

preparing 53 

specific gravity of 53 

pasteurizing 55 

peptonizing 55 

modifying 57, 59 

top 57 

warm from animal 58 

when to reduce 59 

to dry up 237 

Milk diet, exclusive 51 

Miscarriage 27 

Miscellaneous 234 

Modifying milk 57, 59 

Morning sickness 11, 29 

Mothers — 

should be regenerated with birth 9 

mutilated 9 

overheating bodies of 20 

should eat moderately 64, 200 

when nursing, should live continent lives 83 

should have plenty of sleep 97, 200 

Mouth, care of 39 

Mumps 145 



N 

Napkins 44, 238 

Natural phenomenon, childbirth a 7 

Necessities for confinement 30 

Nervousness 102 



252 Index 

Page 

Never eat when uncomfortable 100 

Night clothes 209 

Nipples — 

care of mother's 29 

care of rubber 54 

Nose, foreign bodies in 235 

Nursery — 

temperature of 45 

overheating and chilling 45 

Nursing — 

convulsions in children 13 

how long 50 

at night 50 

bottles 54 

how often 62 

mothers should live continent lives S3 

too much, for sick babies 210 



O 

Oil, use of, for rubbing 32 

Overeating 28, 77 

causes long, tedious labors 26 

of mothers affects child 64, 200 

Overfeeding 14, 19, 69, 70, 84, 202 

Overheating — 

of bodies of mothers 20, 108 

of bodies of children 37, 41, 108 

Overstimulation 119, 123 



P 

Painful menstruation 12 

Paralysis, infantile 154 

Pasteurizing milk 55 

Pepsin 56 

Peptonizing 55 

Petit mal 158 

Phymosis 129 

Pies 113, 121 

Pin-worms 153 

Pneumonia 109, 112, 146 



Index 253 

Page 

Poise 5, 20, 27, 44, 201 

Poisoning, septic 15 

Poliomyelitis 18, 48, 154 

acute epidemic 172 

Potential energy 65 

Pregnancy — 

gas distention at end of 7 

diet in 25 

ectopic 27 

Preparing milk 53 

Prophylaxis secured through health 22 

Proteid food not needed before third year 78 

Ptomaine poisoning 19 

Pump, breast- 13, 29 



Q 

Quality and quantity of food 85 

Quarrels, family, injurious to unborn child 18 

Quiet necessary for sick babies 96 

Quinsy 132 



R 

Raw fruit constipating 101 

Reducing milk 59 

Reflex irritations 122 

worms 123 

eye-strain 125 

indigestion 128 

constipation 129 

diarrhea 129 

convulsions 129 

phymosis 129 

vaginitis and vulvitis 129 

Rest- 
necessary for pregnant women 27 

necessary for children 96 

Restlessness — 

in baby necessary for development 61 

to cure, at night 81 

Rheumatic heart 25 



254 Index 

Page 

Rheumatism 133 

Rickets 52 

Rubbing for sick children 212 

Rules, four 234 

Rupture 69 



S 

Scalp, care of 232 

Scarlet fever 19, 104, 131, 146 

Scurvy 52, 232 

Selecting milk 52 

Self-control 89 

Sensuality — 

must be avoided before birth 10 

must be avoided in children 90 

Septic poisoning 15 

Sexual abuse 17 

Sick child, best food for 86 

Sickness — 

morning 11 

in children, causes of 19, 39 

how to prevent, in children 40 

children expected to have 61 

care of room during 207 

Skin, must be kept clean 35 

Skin-chafing 40, 232 

Sleep 95 

Smallpox 143, 173 

Soap, use of, for bathing 32, 238 

Specific gravity of milk 53 

Spoiled children, how to cure 68 

Sprue 39 

Starch- 
pathological fermentation of 21 

feeding 63, 78, 79 

Stomach — 

diseases of 21 

irritation of 70, 100, 124, 131 

ulceration of 114 

Stools, curds in 83, 198, 205 

Strain, eye- 125 



Index 255 

Page 

St. Vitus' dance 152 

Subinvolution 25 

Sugar — 

needed to certain extent 63 

and starch 99, 127 

Sugar-eating by mother affects child 47 

Suggestions for expectant mother 29 

Sweet fruits 63 

Sweetened milk 53 



T 

Tainted food 21 

Talking 47 

Teach children to keep bodies clean 35 

Teething 49, 172 

Temperature of — 

water for bath 33 

room for air bath 36 

Thirst- 
often mistaken for hunger 84 

extreme 198 

Thrush 232 

^Tonsilitis 99, 113, 121, 134 

Top milk 57 

Transmission, desirable 65 

1,.--" 
Treatment for — 

vomiting 70 

stomach irritation 70 

Tuberculosis 19, 113, 116 

Tumors 26 

Typhoid fever 104, 146 



Ulceration of stomach 114 

Uncomfortable children, care of 83 

Unkindness of parents 19 

Urine 29 

Use of soap 32 



256 Index 

v 

Page 

Vaccination 138, 173, 189 

Vaginitis 129 

Varicose veins 25 

Variety leads to overeating .' 100 

Vegetable juices 204 

Vomiting 70 

Vulvitis 129 



W 

Walking 48 

Want, advantage of 65 

Warm — 

children must be 43, 201, 233 

sick babies must be 82 

milk from animal best 58 

Water — 

given freely to babies 84 

for constipation 101 

j Weaning 13, 71 

Weight of baby 45, 60 

Wetting of bed 100, 103, 120, 232 

* Whooping-cough 144, 156 

Windpipe, foreign bodies in 235 

Womb, catarrhal inflammation of 11 

Worms 123, 153 



